England manager Sarina Wiegman provided an update on Alex Greenwood following a serious head injury that forced her to leave the pitch on a stretcher during the game against Belgium in the Nations League.
The match was halted for 13 minutes after a head collision between Greenwood and Belgium’s Jassina Blom. Greenwood received extended medical treatment on the field before being stretchered off and administered oxygen to stabilize her condition.
Wiegman, addressing reporters after her team’s 3-2 loss, confirmed that the Manchester City player is “fine” but is displaying symptoms of concussion.
“She’s fine,” said Wiegman about Greenwood. While further elaborating on the player’s condition she added: “I haven’t spoken to her yet. I also haven’t spoken to the doctor about it yet, but I heard she’s walking around. Obviously, she has a concussion, but it’s good news that she’s walking around and doing fine.”
The Lionesses added in an official statement on Wednesday afternoon: “Alex Greenwood travelled home as planned and will now return to Manchester City where she’ll continue to be assessed.”
Wiegman hasn’t talked to Alex Greenwood yet
The defeat to Belgium could have significant consequences as the Lionesses now need to rely on other results to secure Olympic qualification. Wiegman expressed her frustration after the match but emphasized that the team is not panicking.
“That’s life, and so that’s football too,” said the England manager. “So, we’re not panicking or anything. You could see that we were trying hard, we were trying to find the space and we were trying to have different crosses and play a possession game into the final third, but we just missed in the final perfect touch … although we did create chances to really score goals.”
The Dutch manager further acknowledged that Belgium outperformed her team and recognized that securing a place in the Paris 2024 Olympics will be a challenging task.
“Very disappointed, we are frustrated too, I think this was unnecessary,” said Wiegman. “There were a couple of things we wanted to do better today, but in the end we were too sloppy. They had more counterattacks than they did on Friday, so they did that well and I think we could have done better.
“It’s very tight (Olympic qualification)… we can only do what we can do, so we know what we have to do. We play at Wembley [against the Netherlands], that’s always very exciting, so we’re looking forward to that. But we also want to show again what we are, and that we can do better, against a top opponent of course, too. We have to win and we have to win by more than one, and then we have to win [against] Scotland, so [the task] is very clear.”
