The England striker Ellen White is still haunted by the VAR decision which ruled out her equaliser, with her toe adjudged to have been in an offside position in their World Cup semi-final defeat against USA last summer.
“I do sit at home at night and say: ‘Ahhh, I just can’t stand VAR.’ My husband will say the same thing. It’s frustrating,” she said, still clearly exasperated, as the Lionesses prepare for their first meeting with USA since that defeat, in the SheBelieves Cup on Thursday night. “I still get a lot of people saying stuff about VAR and internally [she groans]. It really irritates me. But it is what it is, that’s just football.”
The decision made their task harder, and denied her a goal that would have given her the tournament’s golden boot – instead she finished third behind Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, who had more assists. Having VAR as a constant in the headlines since that tight defeat has not helped her move on.
“I might cancel all my subscriptions,” she said with a laugh. “To be honest the game’s been crying out for something. There’s always going to be talking points and criticisms. Hopefully it will be in the favour of the striker.”
Her teammate Rachel Daly, who plays in the US with Houston Dash, believes the Lionesses are good enough to do just that. “We have no reason to really back off from them where maybe in the past we have,” said the player, who plays up front for Dash but will likely stand in for the injured Lucy Bronze at right-back.
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“I don’t think anyone in the group is like: ‘We aren’t as good as them’ – we know we are. We know what we did in the World Cup and it is a bit of a revenge game for us, we want to go out there and beat all the teams, not just the US.”
Playing in the US means Daly is used to the challenge of facing Rapinoe and company. “It’s heightened because I’m here but I also play against these girls week in and week out so I don’t think it is that big of a fear factor for me, they are fantastic but so are we. There’s no reason why we can’t go out and beat them.”
While White and the rest of the team were able to escape from the US World Cup party, Daly and Jodie Taylor had to go straight back to their NWSL teams.
“It was really frustrating because everything everywhere was about them winning,” said Daly. “There were billboards everywhere, walking into the airport the first thing I see is welcome home USA, World Cup champions and then they do parades. It is kind of in your face more, you can avoid it when you go home, it might be in the papers but for me it was literally everywhere.”
That, though, has provided motivation. “It was quite hard. But it was quite good for me to be able to see that and see how I want to move forward and want to be on the receiving end of next time around,” she said.
Tweaking the rules to shift the balance would be a good thing, according to White. “As a striker you always would be [in favour of change] but if it’s there in black and white it’s there in black and white so you can’t really say if it’s wrong. That’s the way the game is moving forward and you’ve just got to move with it and grow with it and hopefully not be offside. That’s the main thing.”
Now, England hope to exact some revenge, albeit in a friendly tournament. “We are really excited to play them and obviously the intensity levels and competitiveness of playing the US is always really high,” said White. “We’re a competitive group and we want to win. We haven’t shied away from saying that.”