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The England Women’s football team comes to Cyprus this week for the Cyprus Women’s Cup 2010 tournament. The tournament starts on Wednesday 24th February and will be held in Larnaca and Nicosia.

 
Italy, New Zealand, Scotland and The Netherlands make up group 1;  Canada, England, South Africa and Switzerland make up group 2.
 

England’s head coach, Hope Powell sees the tournament as an ideal preparation for England Women’s Austria and Spain qualifiers.
 

“The tournament will give me a chance to look at everyone in the squad and prepare in the right way for the double header," said Powell.
 
"That is the priority at the moment and we will get some good game time over in Cyprus. The squad of 22 will all be involved, and fingers crossed, we can repeat our success of last year and come away with the trophy.”

 
“We had a great year in 2009, as we did in 2008. We got to a major Final and you can see the hunger in the players of wanting more success like that. We have done well the last couple of years but we haven’t won a major trophy yet and all the players are focused on World Cup qualification. We want to be in Germany in 2011 and we want to do well in tournaments on a permanent basis.”

 
Karen Carney will be missing from the tournament but Rachel Yankee will return to the squad.

 
“Karen has a knee injury but we hope to have her back for the qualifiers. Rachel did very well at our last training camp in La Manga and she is having a good season at Arsenal. She will add something to the squad and we hope her qualities will come to the forefront.”

 
The team is looking forward to the games and is hoping for a good crowd to encourage all the players.

 
Click here for the full tournament schedule.
 

The finals will be held on Wednesday 3rd March.