England Women 1-0 Spain Women
Chelsea Men 4-0 Southampton Men
In the Lionesses' first clash with Spain since the 2023 Women's World Cup final, it was Chelsea players in key positions who helped secure a midweek win at Wembley to take a step closer to defending their European title in Switzerland in the summer.
With Hannah Hampton between the sticks, and three of the back four – Lucy Bronze, Millie Bright and Niamh Charles – all playing their football at Kingsmeadow, the defensive unit was distinctly blue.
A clean sheet, plus a scrambled goal by Jess Park just after 30 minutes, was enough to frustrate the world champions, despite the Spanish side having chance after chance to equalise.
Marauding around the pitch in forward positions was Lauren James, now seemingly back to full fitness after injury issues, while Keira Walsh played her part in midfield, with only one heart-stopping scare when she failed to clear the ball in her own area and nearly let the visitors in.
James goes from strength to strength, honing and polishing her performances at Chelsea, but managing to transfer those skills increasingly to the international stage too.
Manager Sarina Wiegman decided not to play Aggie Beever-Jones, who was on the England bench, but the fact that the young Chelsea striker was standing by suggests she could yet play a part in the upcoming tournament itself.
Hampton made a couple of crucial saves, including a two-fisted flying dive and a well-timed outstretched foot to deny one of the most admired attacking units in women's football.
"We kept them out," she said simply at the end. "I do think there are things in the game that I can improve on, and get better at. But at the end of the day we got the win, and that's all that matters.
"I'll go and watch the game back, and learn all the things I need to improve on. We dug in hard as a team, and we got that important result that we needed in our group. Defensively we were solid."
The England manager, beaming with pride after the final whistle, said that winning was critical to building the team's self-belief. "We know where we want to go, where we are, what we're working on. We just want to improve every single day."
In the Lionesses' group, England are level top with Portugal, who defeated Belgium. England had only won two of their previous six matches before Wednesday's 1-0 Wembley victory… a night which perplexingly included a floodlight failure after 50 minutes, leading to 40,000 phone torches being fired up to briefly compensate until power returned.
Chelsea Women are back in WSL action on Sunday when they travel down to Brighton ahead of a home clash with Leicester City at Kingsmeadow in midweek on Wednesday 5 March at 7.30pm.
Southampton demolished
Meanwhile Chelsea's men got their league form back on track against lowly Southampton on Tuesday night with an emphatic 4-0 result at the Bridge.
Ahead of the game around 200 angry Blues fans demonstrated at the Britannia gate against the current American owners. "We want our Chelsea back," they bellowed, brandishing none-too-polite banners.
The consensus around Stamford Bridge is that if results had been better since Boxing Day, the discontent wouldn't have bubbled over into such strong feeling.
Tellingly, stadium announcer Lee Parker made a pointed remark over the Tannoy after reading out the teams before the clash with the Saints. Win or lose, he bellowed, "we stick together". Chelsea's hierarchy will be hoping that message resonates with supporters.
Goals from Chris Nkunku, Pedro Neto, Levi Colwill and Marc Cucurella saw off the visitors, whose position now looks irredeemable at the bottom of the table.
The Blues travel to Denmark next week for the first leg of a double-header against FC Copenhagen in the Uefa Conference.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of Hammersmith & Fulham Council.
