LIONESS LANDMARK – Pride of Lionesses

Proud LCL head coach Jocelyn Prêcheur talks about his young players, and especially Freya Godfrey’s selection for the Lionesses squad for their upcoming fixtures against China and Ghana.

When you’re in the thick of a season, with WSL and cup games every few days, getting your hugely experienced and your young, hungry players to gel is a hard task.

There are already captains and leaders for Sweden, France, Japan and Italy in the London City Lionesses starting XI, plus multiple seasoned internationals, of course.

But maybe the biggest signs that LCL’s ‘project’ is not just starting to flourish, but also turning heads, are the full international call-ups for 19-year-old Lyon loanee Wassa Sangaré for France, and of course Freya Godfrey (above, left) for England.

In LCL’s last few games, against Chelsea, Spurs and Villa, it feels like Freya Godfrey has really stepped up and helped unlock the midfield?

Prêcheur: Absolutely. First, I already mentioned developing young talent, it’s a big part of our strategy in London City.

That’s why the majority of the squad have the profile of Freya. They are very young, very talented, of course, I’m fortunate about this, but very young, so they need to be developed.

Similar to the team, they are far from expressing their full potential.

Now, I’m very happy about the evolution of Freya. I agree with you when you said she made the difference.

She’s has a strong impact on the result. But she’s not the only one. For example, defensively, Wassa Sangaré and Rofiat Imuran also made a great performance to get the result and to get the three points.

So, yes, they are young, but they increase their self-confidence Sunday after Sunday. And it’s very interesting for me.

Now, the biggest challenge for them – because I never had any doubt about their capacity to perform in that level –
the biggest challenge for all this player is to be consistent.

And this is the most difficult thing. To get used to this league, get used to this season.

It’s difficult, physically speaking, because their body is not ready yet and is still developing.

So, of course, if you’re tired sometimes, we need to manage their load to be sure, to give the time to adapt and make them able to repeat intensive effort every game.

But we are in a good way and they are working hard.

And when they perform like Freya performed last week, I hope it’s encouraged them to keep going, keep working and increase their self-confidence because the main point is they are very talented.

So they have the capacity to adapt and perform.

You must feel very pleased about Freya Godfrey being called up to the Lionesses?

Of course. I really appreciated also coach [Sarina] Wiegman called me to announce she will call up Freya Godfrey, and I really liked the chat we have.

She has a good approach to give a chance also to some young players, which is very important because not everyone is like this.

And after, of course, as I think it was with you, Helen, last week, I mentioned the fact that developing players is very important part of the project in London City.

So when you have this kind of good news, it encourages everyone to keep working hard.

Despite the fact we are in November, we start to be tired.

The mental load is high at the moment, but it’s very, very good news for the player, for the staff to really encourage everyone to keep working.

Very happy for Freya because everyone knows her talent, but maybe not everyone knows how disciplined she is, how professional she is for such a young player.

So for me, she’s a very good example to follow for all the other young players of a generation I have in my team, and of course having our first Lionesses for the history – real Lionesses – it’s a very good step for us.

I hope we will have a few more in the next few months.

Photos: England; Helen M Jerome