The battle against social media abuse in women’s football

England boss Sarina Wiegman has offered support to Georgia Stanway and promised to talk with her players about social media after the 22-year-old received abuse following a red card in the Manchester derby.

The Manchester City forward was sent off for a thigh-high tackle on Leah Galton in the 35th minute of the match which ended 2-2.

Wiegman was speaking after she named her 24-player squad for the upcoming 2023 World Cup qualifying matches against Northern Ireland and Latvia.

“Of course, I’m very disappointed for her and I felt sad for her that she had this action in the game, and she was sent off for a position where she doesn’t play very often and so far, she did okay,” Wiegman said.

“Social media, sometimes it’s a chance to get messages out and sometimes you get reactions that you think why do people react this way? And it’s so disappointing that people do that.

“I haven’t spoken to Georgia yet and I hope she’s fine, she’s a good woman. Just stick with the people who are around you and they know who you are.

“[Social media] It’s certainly something we have to be aware of, and we are aware of, so we speak with players about it, we have a couple of national periods until the Euros and this is one of the themes that we will speak about with our group.”

Wiegman is looking forward to a “special” evening when the Lionesses make their competitive debut at Wembley next Saturday.

Their previous Wembley appearance saw them lose to Germany in a friendly played out in front of 77,768 fans in November 2019, with England taking on Northern Ireland this time out.

“It’s very, very special to play at Wembley and although I’m very excited, I am also calm because we are playing another match, and we just want to play really well, with a good win,” Wiegman added.

“We hope the people that come and watch us have a very nice evening and enjoy themselves, and also people that watch on the TV, enjoy themselves, and then we’ll be happy.

“It’s a special occasion, because you’re playing at Wembley, and it’s the first competitive game we play there in history, so in lots of ways it’s special.”

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England are again without captain Steph Houghton who is still missing with an ankle injury and Wiegman has said she will discuss with the players before naming a stand-in skipper, with Leah Williamson taking the reins in the previous international break.

The squad includes plenty of youth with Lotte Wubben-Moy, Ella Toone and Lauren Hemp all retaining their places.

Having backed up an 8-0 victory over North Macedonia with a 10-0 dismantling of Luxembourg, Wiegman expects a tougher test from Northern Ireland in their previous qualifying wins.

“[There will be] more competition than the normal because they are neighbours, I guess. But I think Northern Ireland has been growing very much.

“For the first time in history, they qualified for the Euros by winning against Ukraine and they are continuing to build on their playing style and they’ve had a good start in this qualification series, so we expect a better team than we did before I was in and we expect a better team and a level higher than we have played last month.”