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London City Lionesses were defeated 1-0 in their final match before the international break, with Durham Women seizing three points at Maiden Castle.
Speaking shortly after the match, head coach Carolina Morace reflected on her side's performance, the challenges posed by playing on an artificial pitch, and her plans for the international break.
After a late winner for Durham, what are your thoughts on the game?
It’s a difficult game because suffered a big loss last week and there is always a huge reaction to that kind of result.
We tried to play our game with ball possession, but it doesn’t help to have a field that is turf because the bounce is completely different. We made many technical mistakes in the first half that we wouldn’t usually make.
I felt that we dominated the game but didn’t create enough chances, with eleven shots and a lot of corners in the second half. We have to work on creating more dangerous situations as we move through the season.
What are you plans for the international break?
The problem with the break is that we lose many players… because we started the preseason late, I want to keep all of the players at the same physical level. We will use this time to implement our physical conditioning and keep working on our game.
I can already see that there have been improvements, but sometimes we lose the ball in bad ways and we need to be more confident with our ball possession.
It is completely different to play here because the ball bounces and rolls in a different way. I don’t think it is good for women’s football to be played on turf – and that is for the whole world as everyone understands the issue with our knees.
But that doesn’t have to be an excuse for us today because Durham played on the same field. It’s just, in general, I do not like astroturf pitch for women’s football.
How will you approach the next few days on the training field?
It's difficult to keep the morale of the players high when we have conceded late goals in the last two games, despite playing with ball possession all the time. It is very difficult to say something to the players and I am sorry for them and the staff. But that doesn’t have to take away our confidence, we just have to try to do our job better.