England manager Gareth Southgate feels that his team suffer as they try to mature their game. The World Cup semi-finalists began their UEFA Nations League campaign with a 2-1 defeat to Spain at Wembley. England scored early thanks to Marcus Rashford who tapped in a brilliant pass from Luke Shaw past de Gea.
Just two minutes later, a pass from Valencia forward Rodrigo was fired in the back of the net by Saul Niguez. Then in the 32nd minute, Rodrigo scored a goal himself to give Spain the lead. No further goals were scored and Spain won 2-1.
Despite the defeat, Gareth Southgate insisted that England aren’t changing their game.
Southgate said, “We’re under no illusions that Spain were the better team for large periods and are brilliant at what they do but we are in the early stages of what we’re trying to do still. They pressed extremely well and it took us a while to work out where that press was coming from and find a solution to it. We did it a couple of times but at the moment we’re still finding our feet in playing out from those areas.
Now we have a choice. We can either go back to our old style and we’ll never be a top team or we can keep trying to do what we do and suffer at times. We have got some players who can do it, others who are improving at it and for me it’s the way I believe we should play.They have a system in Spain that has produced some of the best midfield players in the world ever. At the moment we have a different profile of player, we can’t play the way that they want to play.
With some of our back players we can move the ball out and once we’re a bit a fitter and have better match fitness, we’ll function a bit better higher up the pitch and we’ve got to keep working at what we’re trying to do. It takes time. We’ve come a long way in a short space of time and today was as tough a test as you could have against a team that presses like that and are so good in possession. I think at the moment we have to stick with the plan, stick with what we’re doing and just get better at doing it.”
England’s next match in the international break is against Switzerland at Leicester on Tuesday. On that very day, World Cup runners-up Croatia begin their Nations League campaign against Spain at Elche. England’s next Nations League match is against Croatia at Rijeka on October 12.
