Jill's forward thinking
By Glenn Lavery
Friday, 16 September, 2011
Jill Scott keen to put World Cup behind her and focus on Euros.
Jill Scott was named in the FIFA All-Star Team for this summer's World Cup and was England's top scorer at the Finals with two goals.
Widely regarded as the Three Lions' player of the tournament, the midfielder has every reason to look back on what she calls an "amazing" experience with great fondness.
However, despite her affection for this summer’s showpiece event, Scott knows the World Cup is history and that the focus is now entirely on qualifying for Euro 2013, a process England will begin in Belgrade on Saturday when they take on Serbia.
The Everton player has become a key member of Hope Powell’s squad since she made her debut against Holland in 2006 and has now racked up almost a half century of caps. In the process she has helped turn England into the sixth best side in the world according to FIFA’s latest rankings and she has urged her team-mates to keep on improving, citing the recent victories over Japan, Sweden and USA as her motivation.
“We have spoken a lot about expectation levels and how they have changed recently,” said Scott. “We used to go out and want to beat the bigger nations, but that has changed; now everyone wants to beat us and we’ll have to cope with that.
“We have proved that when we put in a good performance we can beat the better teams, like Japan. It’s just about doing that on a more consistent basis. We’ve got our performances against USA, Sweden and Japan to reflect upon and hopefully that will be our benchmark going forward.
“We have had some time to look back on the World Cup but we just need to look forward now and make sure we qualify for the next Euros because playing in World Cups and European Championships will only make us better players and a better team.
“We are all just focused on these Euro qualifiers. We have spoken about what we did well in Germany and identified the areas we need to improve on to become the best. It’s just about doing it now.”