大象传媒

Lioness: Ellen White breaks England goal scoring record

Media caption,

England 20-0 Latvia: Ellen White sets goalscoring record

The Lionesses smashed records on Tuesday night after their 20-nil win against Latvia in the Women's World Cup qualifiers.

Ellen White's hat-trick made her England's highest goal scorer, with 48 goals in 101 appearances.

Their high goal scoring game beat their previous record in competitive win, a 13-0 victory against Hungary back in 2005.

Success for White

Image source, Reuters

It was an emotional night for White and when she broke the record the striker closed her eyes and grabbed the badge on her shirt, whilst team-mates came running over to congratulate her.

White beat Kelly Smith's previous record of 46 goals for England.

It was success all round as Manchester City's Lauren Hemp scored four goals, her first playing for England and Jess Carter also scored her first international goal.

In total, 10 different England goal scorers contributed to the victory.

Their win keeps them top of their World Cup qualifying group, with six wins in six games.

Image source, Reuters/Molly Darlington
Image caption,

England manager Sarina Wiegman doesn't think the high number of goals is a good thing

But manager Sarina Wiegman wasn't too happy with the high number of goals saying: "You want competitive games and these are not competitive games.

"In every country you want to develop the women's game but I don't think it's good that the scores are so high. I know it has the attention of the federations and I think that's good as I don't think 20-0 is good for the development of anyone.

"We really need some top-level games now which we're going to have [next year] because then we'll really know where we are."

England will next take on North Macedonia 8 April.

Image source, Gonzalo Arroyo - UEFA
Image caption,

Scotland's goalie, Lee Alexander faced 18 shots on target from Spain in last night's game

How did the rest of the UK teams do?

Wales suffered their first defeat of the World Cup qualifying campaign, losing 2-nil to France.

France now leads their group, but Wales are in second place and remain on track for a play-off spot with four matches remaining.

Scotland's so far unbeaten tournament record also came to a end last night as Spain scored eight times against them, despite plenty of saves from goal keeper, Lee Alexander.

The Scots now move into second position in their group, five points behind leaders Spain.

Northern Ireland ended the year last Thursday, with a 9-nil victory over North Macedonia.