Welcome to Upfront. I'm Chloe Morgan. And I'm Rachel Sullivan. The road to the Brazil World Cup has officially begun. Today we're checking in with the Lionesses and Ireland and more to discuss those opening games and what the road to qualification looks like. Oh God, I feel nervous about this bit already. Are we going to see more

experimenting from Sazzy V's Will Ireland bounce back from Heartbreak Against France. Stay tuned for that

and much, much more.

There's a lot of stuff going on in world politics at the moment, and I will just touch briefly on that in a second.

But I would like to give a bit of a shout out to a friend of the pod, Darren, who I bumped into at a pub.

I was basically in this disgusting kind of very ruraly looking pub that I'd never been to in my local area. It had a,

it had a flag outside, and so I was a little bit nervous to go in with Florence. And we went in, had a couple of beers. We were like, oh, it's not the most comfortable of environments, but we'll stay here and just finish off our drink and go one more. Anyway, this guy comes over and I was like, oh gosh what's going to happen here anyway he said oh are you Chloe from up front it was like

I listen to your podcast every single week and I I absolutely love it. And he was like, surprised you're in here, to be honest. It's a little bit of an unusual space. I wouldn't suggest that you stay in here for much longer, but also just wanted to say I'm a massive fan of you and Rach. So massive shout out to Darren. Thank you for coming over. and yeah, I've had to give a shout We've obviously got to start with England and their road to the 27 World Cup

which Massive shout out to Darren. Thank you for coming over. And yeah, I've got to give a shout We've obviously got to start with England and their road to the 2027 World Cup, which began on

Tuesday night in Antalya with a 6-1 win over Ukraine. Very formidable, if not a little bit of a slow

start and it looked like we weren't, it wasn't ever going to hit the back of the net. We'll get

into the coverage around the game. But let's talk about the 90 minutes itself

first, because it was, it felt like we were knocking at the door, knocking at the door,

doing all the right things, creating loads of chances, loads of opportunities, but the

ball, it was like a kind of like a magnetic field type of game where you just could not get

the ball in the back of the

net. Obviously all the goals in the came in the second half. We had 85% of the ball in the first

45 minutes. But it was just felt a bit a bit wasteful in a way, Rach. I mean, what did you think?

I think it takes time to figure out a low block.

And I know, like I saw some comments being like, it's not like they've never faced it before, like how are they struggling so much? To think a team just kind of goes out and goes, this is exactly how this low block is going to show itself and this is exactly how we fix it. A low block isn't a singular way of playing. you don't everyone doesn same thing in a low block, right? So you've got to find ways and get time to kind of figure out when you're on the pitch. So yes, there was a lot of movement, a lot of possession. And you're essentially, you know, problem solving on the pitch. You're trying to work out some of these players. Are there opportunities? Can we draw them out? Will they jump? All that kind of stuff. And I think it took that first half for England to figure that out. I thought Ukraine, as expected, were very disciplined. But the difficulty with playing a game like that, when you've not got possession of the ball, it's very, very tiring. And I think England knew if they were patient that those moments and those opportunities would come. So yes, they were very dominant in the first half and yes, it was frustrating, but I did feel that they were going to figure it out. They were creating a lot, not a lot on target, and that's difficult when it's so compact in the middle. So I think getting half time in to be able to go, okay, here's what we've figured out from the first half. Here's where we think we could exploit. If you're this player or that player, I think Georgia Stanway touched on it, speaking to Sophie after the game, where she was told to start taking some shots from outside the box. We know she can do that. Players were told to, you know, start having a bit of a pot from outside. Players will step forward then. If they know you're going to do that, that create space.

So it was just that 45 minutes to figure it out. And I think the second half proves that they did a very good job of doing that. Yeah, definitely. I think, I mean, the chance they created were ones that I thought, OK, yes, 100% Ukraine's defence, I thought was super, super effective. if they were kind of, you know, crowding the middle areas.

They were making it congested.

...