Russo and Wiegman hail ruthless England performance as Lionesses progress to face Ukraine for place at World Cup

Alessia Russo praised England’s ruthlessness after the Lionesses thrashed Greece 5-0 in their World Cup qualifying play-off.

England had won the first leg 3-1 but Russo admitted there were areas Sarina Wiegman’s side wanted to improve, with the striker pleased by the response in the return fixture.

“We were happy with the first game, getting the win, but there were some things we wanted to work on and I think we saw that tonight,” Russo said.

“We were ruthless early on and nice for a couple to get their debuts too.”

Russo and Lauren James both scored twice along with a Georgia Stanway goal to secure a dominant victory for the Lionesses.

England will now face Ukraine in their next qualifying play-off for a place at next year’s World Cup, with Russo expecting another difficult test.

“It was tough against them also. It took us a while to break them down,” she said.

“We’re happy with tonight, we’ll get back to club football and then all eyes on Ukraine and we want to qualify for the World Cup.”

Wiegman was also encouraged by the improvement her side are making.

“I saw a lot of good things,” the England boss said.

“We wanted to do things better than Friday.

“I think we’ve shown a lot better. There’s always improvements but we scored some great goals.

“We got the first goal very quickly and that’s very helpful.

“We had some more big chances, of course we want to be ruthless all the time, but 5-0 is a pretty good score.”