Key events
36 mins: Deloose volleys a clearance into the head of Vanhaevermaet, and the game is stopped to check that she is unharmed, which she is.
GOAL! Belgium 3-1 England (Mead, 35 mins)
Boos ring out as Mead prepares to take the penalty, but her aim is spectacularly good, the ball rolling just inside the post and into the side netting! Lisa Lichtfus goes the right way, but has not a hope of keeping that out.
England have a penalty!
34 mins: Beth Mead gets to the ball first, Philtjens barrels into her, Mead goes down, and the referee points to the spot!
32 mins: Belgium go close again! A ball down the right allows Janssens to outpace Charles and run into the area, but she ends up shooting from a tight angle and Hampton gets a foot to it.
GOAL! Belgium 3-0 England (Wullaert, 29 mins)
Now they’re three up! Bronze is caught out of position as a ball over her releases Philtjens on the left, and her cross is low, hard and generally excellent. Bright is in front of Wullaert but doesn’t throw herself at it, and Wullaert behind her turns it in!
28 mins: I’m not sure Belgium deserve a two-goal lead, but they’re playing excellently, defending in numbers but well organised and motivated, closing down, snapping into tackles.
24 mins: Bright nearly gets on the end of a free-kick but Cayman puts her off. The game in Vigo has finished, Spain beating Portugal 7-1.
22 mins: Bronze is tripped in the area by Philtjens. It wasn’t exactly violent but it was a foul, and should have been a penalty. One of those nights?
21 mins: England really haven’t created anything at all, but now Bronze sends in an excellent cross that, well, nobody gets on the end of so they still haven’t created anything at all, but that was close.
18 mins: This time Wullaert is the provider, curling in the centre after Eurlings wins another free-kick down the Belgium left. Vanhaevermaet beats Leah Williamson to the header, and though she doesn’t get any pace on it it’s just too high for Hampton to reach.
GOAL! Belgium 2-0 England (Vanhaevermaet, 16 mins)
Belgium double their lead as Justine Vanhaevermaet’s header from a free-kick loops over Hampton and into the net!
15 mins: Mead gives the ball away to Eurlings, just outside England’s penalty area, but the eventual centre is overhit and intercepted.
14 mins: Wullaert finds some space on the right and in front of her Millie Bright backs away in apparent terror. It does mean she’s still on the spot when Wullaert decides to have a shot, and able to deflect it behind.
12 mins: Hannah Eurlings goes down for a while after Lucy Bronze clips her heel as the pair sprint for the ball down England’s right flank.
8 mins: England have had a couple of shots so far, both of them blocked by a defender within a couple of feet of the ball leaving the striker’s boot. Nikita Parris with the latest: she was in a good position for a shot, but with nowhere near enough space.
8 mins: An update from Vigo, where Spain are now 7-1 up against Portugal, with 10 minutes or so to play.
5 mins: It’s a superb ball over the England defence, between left-back and centre-back, and Wullaert outpaces the defenders, sprints into the box and shoots across Hampton and in off the far post!
GOAL! Belgium 1-0 England (Wullaert, 4 mins)
Belgium have control of the ball for the first time in the game, and they only go and score!
2 mins: England keep the ball well for a couple of minutes, but then a pass down the left flank towards Grace Clinton is slightly overhit and a defender intercepts.
1 min: Peeeeeep! England get the game started!
Out come the players! Kick-off is a couple of anthems, a few handshakes, and approximately four minutes away.
Sarina Wiegman says Hannah Hampton is indeed the current No1, ahead of Mary Earps:
At this moment she’s a little bit ahead. I think we have two world-class goalkeepers so it has been a really hard decision but at this moment Hannah’s a little bit ahead.
Tom Garry is in Leuven tonight, and has sent this update from the ground:
As the sun drops behind the horizon at the end of a perfect, blue-sky spring Tuesday in the picturesque, student city of Leuven, both sets of players are warming up in front of me to the beating soundtrack of a long playlist of Belgian dance anthems.
In terms of the England team news, Sarina Wiegman had three big decisions – who to play up front with Alessia Russo injured, who to play on the left wing with Lauren James injured, and who to start in goal after more than a year of questions over whether Mary Earps or Hannah Hampton is the ‘number one’? The latter now appears to be the answer as Wiegman has selected Hampton for a third consecutive Lionesses game, giving her strongest indication yet that Earps has been replaced in the pecking order.
In attack, Wiegman has gone for the experienced Nikita Parris and the Chelsea youngster Aggie Beever-Jones, while one further change sees Jess Park replace Ella Toone in the No10 role. Belgium have been boosted by the return of their captain, Tessa Wullaert, who missed Friday’s game at Ashton Gate with a knock. The Inter striker will be the hosts’ most dangerous, pacy threat. England were caught on the counter-attack several times when losing 3-2 on this ground 18 months ago on a bad night all around for the Lionesses, as Alex Greenwood suffered a nasty concussion in that game. The few-hundred travelling fans away to my right will be hoping to make some happier memories this evening.
Elísabet Gunnarsdóttir, the Belgium manager, says her big hope for the evening is that she sees “more energy, more belief in themselves. I want to see my team believe in the plan throughout 90+ minutes.”
As we kill time while the clock ticks gently towards kick-off, here’s Suzanne Wrack’s report on England’s emphatic victory over these very opponents in Bristol on Friday:
In tonight’s other game in Group A3 Spain were 4-0 up against Portugal in less than half an hour, and that’s how the score remains with a few minutes to play before half-time. The Spaniards are, as I type, 13-0 up in shots.
The teams!
The line-ups have been announced, and here they are:
Belgium: Lichtfus, Cayman, Tysiak, Deloose, Janssens, Philtjens, Vanhaevermaet, Teulings, Detruyer, Wullaert, Eurlings. Subs: Evrard, Bastiaen, Elyn, Delacauw, Missipo, Van Kerkhoven, De Caigny, Dhont, Wijnants, Blom, Toloba, Mathys.
England: Hampton, Bronze, Charles, Williamson, Bright, Walsh, Clinton, Park, Parris, Mead, Beever-Jones. Subs: Earps, Moorhouse, Turner, Carter, Morgan, Le Tissier, Parker, Kirby, Toone, Symonds, Naz, Agyemang.
Referee: Maria Caputi (Italy).
Hello world!
Halfway through their Nations League group-stage campaign and England sit proudly atop the group popularly known as A3, having won at home against both Spain and Belgium and drawn in Portugal. Belgium have not a single point to their name, though they were 2-1 up in Valencia back in February before the Spaniards scored two stoppage-time goals to turn the game around and, as various members of the England group have been talking about this week, they last time this fixture was played, a year and a half ago, the hosts won it 3-2.
“We didn’t play our best and it was at the back of the World Cup so we were struggling with our levels a bit,” Sarina Wiegman said. “How I see [this game] is that we really want to kind of get revenge on ourselves. We want to show that we are better than we were then and we can do a lot better.”
England are missing a string of senior players, including Lauren Hemp, Georgia Stanway and Alex Greenwood, who all have knee injuries, as well as Lauren James and Alessia Russo, who both pulled out over the weekend, and Chloe Kelly. The 19-year-old Arsenal forward Michelle Agyemang, who according to left-back Niamh Charles is “so pacy” and “can probably change a game in an instant” has been called up and could make her debut.
So, welcome! And may I suggest you start your evening by reading the Tom Garry preview I shamelessly stole most of that information from? You’re too kind.
