Sarina Wiegman confident England will be ready for Euro 2022 title challenge

Sarina Wiegman is confident England will be ready to fight for Women’s Euro 2022 glory this summer as they contemplate a stern test of their credentials.

The hosts will step up their preparations over the next week in the new Arnold Clark Cup tournament, which will see them face fellow FIFA-ranked top-10 sides Canada, Spain and Germany starting with the Canadians at Middlesbrough’s Riverside Stadium on Thursday evening.

The three fixtures – they play Spain at Carrow Road on Sunday and the Germans at Molineux three days later – will provide head coach Wiegman with an insight into where the team currently is ahead of what she expects to be a highly competitive fight for the title when Europe’s best convene in July.

She said: “When you go to a tournament, you want to win the tournament, just like all other teams, and there are lots of teams that would be able to do that or should be able to win the Euros because the game has developed so much.

“Now more and more countries are (among) the favourites in this tournament. It’s going to be really exciting.

“I think the games are going to be again on a higher level than the tournament four years ago or the World Cup that the European teams played in too, so that’s going to be really exciting.

“We have a plan. We now have this tournament, which we really need to know where we are at this point and what we need to do to become better as an individual and as a team, and then hopefully we’ll, I’m convinced, we’ll be ready on July 6 and we should be playing the best we can.”

I think we've realised ultimately we've potentially under-achieved the last few tournaments and everybody wants to turn that round.- England captain Leah Williamson

Leah Williamson, captain in the absence of the