Ellen White admitted it is an “incredible feeling” to be mentioned alongside Wayne Rooney, Sir Bobby Charlton and Harry Kane after bringing up her 50th England goal.
White’s landmark goal, a trademark header in a 10-0 World Cup qualifying win win over North Macedonia, moved her one clear of Charlton and Kane and to within three of all-time England record goalscorer Rooney.
“It’s a massive privilege,” White told ITV Sport. “It’s a dream for me to play for England and for me it’s about any way I can contribute to the team.
“Obviously I’m delighted to get on the scoresheet but for me it’s all about the team hopefully qualifying for the World Cup. But it’s an incredible feeling to be amongst those amazing players. It’s really lovely.”
Beth Mead hit four, Ella Toone also grabbed a hat-trick and Georgia Stanway scored twice in a one-sided encounter in Skopje as England cruised another step closer to qualifying for next year’s tournament.
“It’s really pleasing to score that amount of goals and the overall performance…our standards are really high,” added Manchester City striker White.
“We wanted that three points so the overall performance is really pleasing, and obviously scoring 10 goals as well.”
England began their qualifying campaign with an 8-0 win over the same opposition at St Mary’s in September in Sarina Wiegman’s first game in charge.
They have now scored 63 times in just seven qualifying matches – while conceding none – and if Austria drop points, they could officially book their ticket to next year’s tournament against Northern Ireland on Tuesday.
Wiegman told ITV Sport: “We played an opponent that compared to us isn’t great, but we have to make the game and speed up the game and that’s what we tried to do.
“We scored 10, which is nice. We created lots of chances and sometimes we should have been a little more patient. But if you score 10 goals that’s just a good result.
“The way we want to play really comes across. The connection today, you could see compared to the first game in September.”
