SCOTLAND women’s coach Shelley Kerr is preparing for a difficult but exciting first game against England when her side make their World Cup debut in France next summer after being drawn in the same group. Japan and Argentina are the other teams in Group D.
“It’s a very, very tough first game, and a very tough second game [against Japan],” Kerr conceded. “But when you’re a manager you want to compete on the world stage. That’s what football’s all about. I’m really excited about playing the best teams in a World Cup.”
Football’s oldest rivals also met in a group opener at Euro 2017, but both were under different management with Mark Sampson’s side running out easy 6-0 winners in Utrecht. Now, however, they have the chance to avenge that defeat.
Scotland and Manchester City defender Jen Beattie is looking forward to it.
“I think it just probably adds to the excitement even more now that we know who’s in our group," she said. "England again in the opening game of the tournament, only our second tournament ever.”
England boss Phil Neville believes Scotland are a much-improved side under Kerr – and expects a hard game against them in Nice on June 9.
“It will be a special occasion against our nearest rivals,” he said. “I watched Scotland play USA [in Paisley last month] and thought they were fantastic.”
Scotland lost that game by just 1-0, confirming the advances they have made under Kerr, who replaced Anna Signeul after the Euros.
“It will be a top-class game of football and we’ll have to be at our very best and reach a level we’ve probably not produced before while I’ve been manager,” Neville continued. “You go back to that game at the Euros and Scotland are a totally different outfit. They’ve got confidence, they’ve got experience and they’ve got a really good system. They also have a fantastic manager.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here