England’s Women will play their much-anticipated summer international against Sweden at Hartlepool’s Victoria Park stadium.
Mark Sampson’s side will take on the Swedes, who are fifth in the FIFA rankings, on Sunday 3 August (KO 2pm) in a break from their World Cup qualifying campaign. Tickets are on sale now and priced at £5 for adults and £2.50 for children and concessions.
England are eight matches into their FIFA 2015 World Cup qualifying campaign and kept their 100 per cent record intact after beating Ukraine on Thursday at Arena Lviv. Casey Stoney and Eni Aluko were on the scoresheet as England won 2-1.
Head Coach Mark Sampson, said: “Sweden are a very strong side, so it’s always good to take the opportunity to pit ourselves against teams like that and test ourselves.
“If we qualify for Canada, we’ll be playing against the best in the world and matches such as these are key to the development of the team.
“We’ve got a lot of north-east players in this England squad and they’ve wanted us to play up there for a while. They tell me we’ll get a great reception and how vocal the fans are, so we want to put on a good performance in Hartlepool.”
England midfielder Jill Scott, who is from Sunderland, said: “They love their football in the north-east, it’s all people talk about – and it’s not just men’s football, it’s women’s football as well.
“Even before they were in the FA WSL, Sunderland Women were getting crowds of up to 1,000 so hopefully we can get a full house at Hartlepool and hopefully there will be more England fixtures in the north-east to come.
“There’s loads of England players from the area; me, Demi Stokes, Lucy Bronze, and Steph Houghton for example. So I think you can see that the north east breeds quite decent players and hopefully there will some of them on show when we take on Sweden.”
Hartlepool United, chief executive, Russ Green said: “We’re extremely honoured to be hosting another international fixture at Victoria Park.
“It’s prestigious for the Football Club to be hosting such a fixture so we are hoping that as many Pools fans as possible can come along and support England at The Vic.”
Tickets for England v Sweden are priced at £5 for adults and £2.50 for children and concessions. A family ticket is available at £10 (two adults and two children) and group booking discounts also apply.
Tickets are available on the day, 01429 272 584 (option 2), on ticketing.thefa.com, at the Hartlepool United ticket office and by email tickets@hartlepoolunited.co.uk.
