England manager praises star Ellen White after Stadium of Light showing as striker nears huge milestone

The striker netted the only goal as England Women beat Austria by a single goal on Wearside to maintain their 100% winning start to their World Cup qualifying campaign.

It was White’s 45th goal for her country on her 100th cap, which came in the 40th minute, proved to be decisive.

The 32-year-old is now one strike away from drawing level with Kelly Smith, who is the current leading scorer for England.

Wiegman said: “It’s just an incredible achievement. If you have 100 caps, you’ve been so consistent.

“I’ve learned to know Ellen as a real professional player, a terrific team player and then the consistency she brings, still she wants to become better every day, and that’s really special.”

Wiegman added: “It could be another opportunity. I think it’s a matter of time, and that also says the consistency is there. She had her 100th cap, she gets a goal, she’s very close to this record, so it’s very exciting.

“But also how we all live this, it’s a team performance and today it was Ellen who scored the winning goal, which is really nice, but it doesn’t really actually matter who wins the game.

“You also see that Ellen is so happy that she scores the goal, but as long as we keep scoring goals, then we’re happy – and if she breaks that record, of course we would be very happy for her.”

England have won five out of five and are five points clear at the top, but the victory was tough in wintry conditions at the Stadium of Light

Wiegman said: “Today was one of the hardest games because when we weren’t tight enough on the ball, they were becoming dangerous, so we needed two saves from Mary – very good saves, by the way, very important ones.

“It was a tough game with tough opponents who were very well organised and sometimes pretty dangerous on the counter-attack.

“Overall, we had a good performance. We didn’t start that well and sometimes in the second half we had some hard times and times when we made some mistakes that they almost benefited from, but overall we dominated the game.”

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