Penalty practice makes perfect, says Chloe Kelly, after England scrape past ‘unlucky’ Nigeria on spot kicks

BRISBANE – England’s Chloe Kelly said plenty of penalty practice had paid off after scoring the winning spot kick to send the Lionesses into the Women’s World Cup quarter-finals after a nervy 0-0 draw against Nigeria on Monday.

On her approach, she said: “It’s ‘I’m going to score’. That’s how I look at it. Once I win that mental battle, we’re good.”

The 25-year-old winger is England’s woman for big moments, having scored the winner in the European Championship final against Germany in 2022 and the decisive final spot kick in the shoot-out win over Brazil in the Finalissima in April.

On Monday at Brisbane Stadium, the European champions had to survive extra time a player down after star playmaker Lauren James was sent off on 87 minutes for an ill-tempered stamp on the back of Michelle Alozie after the two went down in a tangled heap.

England coach Sarina Wiegman said the 21-year-old lost her emotion in “a split second” and added: “It’s not something she really did on purpose. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”

Her Nigeria counterpart Randy Waldrum said his side had shown their inexperience after James went off. He said: “We created more chances against 11 players than we did against 10. It goes down to experience, I don’t think our players handled it very well.”

Despite their recent experience at crunch time, Georgia Stanway fired England’s first penalty wide, but Bethany England, Rachel Daly, Alex Greenwood and Kelly found the net to prevail 4-2 in the shoot-out and prevent a huge upset.

“It’s amazing, anything that’s thrown at us, we show what we’re capable of,” said Kelly.

“We’ve been practising a lot and it’s working. We keep pushing forward. There is more to come from this special team.”

Goalkeeper Mary Earps seemed to contradict her, but admitted that the Finalissima shoot-out was a terrific warm-up for Monday’s drama in front of 49,461 fans.

“Honestly, I don’t even practise a shoot-out,” said Player of the Match Earps.

“It’s a very special moment, a very special pressure cooker. The odds were against us... The team came together fantastically against all odds to really grind it out against a very tough Nigeria, who were brilliant, relentless.”

Wiegman’s side will face Colombia or Jamaica in the last eight and are among the favourites to win the tournament for the first time.

But they were fortunate not to follow the likes of Germany and United States in crashing out early as Nigeria enjoyed the better of the game, taking advantage of their speed in the transition, with England’s back three regularly exposed by the Nigerian attack.

“They’re very organised, very transitional, very physical and that’s exactly what we saw,” said Wiegman.

England started the match strongly and rattled Nigeria in the opening skirmishes as the Lionesses found plenty of space out wide.

They also controlled possession, completing 173 passes in the first half to Nigeria’s 83.

But it was the Nigerians who looked the most dangerous and they gave the Lionesses a real fright on a number of occasions.

England-born Ashleigh Plumptre had two golden chances to open the scoring, the first coming in the 16th minute when a strike from outside the box crashed onto the crossbar. A minute later, she forced a fine diving save from Earps.

The Nigerians had eight shots at goal in the first half, three more than England, whose best chance fell to Alessia Russo in the 23rd minute. The second half followed the same pattern, but England had a golden chance to seal the match with 15 minutes left, only for Chiamaka Nnadozie to pull off a fine save from Daly’s powerful header.

In extra time, Nigeria again looked most likely, with Alozie and Asisat Oshoala both going close, but neither team could break the deadlock.

Said Waldrum: “To come in here and play the way we did tonight, I thought we were every bit as good (as England). We had every opportunity to get the result and unfortunately we didn’t get it done. Obviously, we didn’t execute on our penalties and when it gets to that point, it’s anyone’s game.

“We had the best chances, we hit the crossbar twice in regulation play. We were a bit unlucky not to get something out of it.”
AFP, REUTERS