STEPH Houghton is confident England can be competitive at next summer’s World Cup, despite Sunday’s 3-0 humbling at the hands of European champions Germany.

The Lionesses, ranked seventh in the world, went into their showpiece debut in front of over 45,000 at Wembley on the back of an unbeaten qualifying campaign and a 4-0 win over Sweden, a nation ranked two places above them.

It has been a hugely encouraging first 12 months under Mark Sampson, who replaced Hope Powell after a dreadful European Championship campaign last summer, and their reward was a first women’s international at the National Stadium.

However, they were brought back down to earth with a bump as Silvia Neid’s team eased to victory on their big day.

Without six first-team members through injury, the Germans demonstrated why they will go into next summer’s tournament as one of the favourites, but Houghton insists England will benefit from the match and prove they can be a force in Canada.

“I think we’ve got to believe that we can challenge at the World Cup,” the South Hetton defender said. “We’ve been beaten 3-0 by the best team in the world, but we now know we can compete with them to a certain extent.

“We just need to tidy up a few things. We need to be a bit more clinical in front of goal and defensively we need to remain focused and switched on for the 90 minutes.

“You can’t switch off against really good players like we did and we’ve got to learn from it.

“We grew into the game in the second half and we gave a good account of ourselves in terms of how we want to play.

“Overall I think the team can be proud from the second half performance.

“I think you’ve got to look at the bigger picture. It’s our first season under Mark Sampson and we’ve had lots of changes.

“We’ve changed the way we play, we’ve brought youngsters in and we’re beginning to become a proper team and one that wants to play for each other.

“We’ve got to take it on the chin. We got six months to go until the World Cup and we’ve got to try and improve as a team.”

While England didn’t get the result they wanted, Sunday’s game will hopefully increase interest in the women’s game.

The attendance was over 15,000 more than the previous record for a women’s international game and that could have been even more had bad weather and planned engineering works not kept some away.

Over 55,000 tickets were sold for the game and, having captained her country in their first fixture at Wembley, Houghton admits she will look back on the occasion with positive thoughts despite the result.

She said: “It was an amazing moment for me to lead the team out at Wembley. I wish the result had gone a different way.

“It’s every girl’s dream to lead your country out at Wembley. It is certainly something I will remember for the rest of my life and so will my family and friends.

“I’d like to see us play more games at Wembley. It’s been a fantastic build up towards the game and the amount of press we’ve had is great.

“Seeing that amount of fans and signing the national anthem gave me goosebumps. We’re very grateful we’ve got the opportunity to play here and hopefully we can do it again.

“I think when we reflect on this in a few days times when the emotions have calmed down, we will realise the game wasn’t as bad as we thought it was and second half especially we can be proud of ourselves.

“Of course you want to win games and beat Germany, but we’ve got to give credit to them because they are a world class team and they performed especially in the first half.”