England suffered a 1-0 loss to Iceland in a friendly match at Wembley Stadium on Friday night. It wasn’t the night Gareth Southgate was hoping for as the Three Lions prepare for Euro 2024 in Germany next week. The match was far from entertaining, and midfielder Declan Rice spoke to the media after the loss and said there’s work to be done.
“Inside I’m hurting, there’s work to be done… When you have that much of the ball, have a couple of clear-cut chances, and get beat 1-0 at home just before the EUROs it isn’t ideal. But I’m going to take the positives. There were a lot of promising performances, we played with a good tempo, and always tried to play forward. We have to be a little bit more savvy.
“It’s not ideal we lost but there are good learning curves we can build on as a team. There’s no doubt about our quality on the ball against teams that sit in like that, it’s about being more mentally switched on.
“We were a bit exposed with our press and not as compact as we usually are. Every game is another chance to get better and we’re going to be more than ready for Serbia.”
England boss Gareth Southgate also addressed the media following the defeat, saying: “We know the performance wasn’t good enough but I think we needed the game. So many of the players needed the game.
“There are a lot of players whose minutes we are managing who have had a break since the end of the club season where you are trying to refresh them but they are out of rhythm. It was obviously a disjointed and disappointing performance and we didn’t show enough character.
“Actually I think it is a really good focus for us ahead of the tournament. Everybody is saying we are going to go there and walk through and have no problems and the reality of international football isn’t that. We have got to be far better without the ball than we were today and then we have to show more composure.”
Southgate added: “Across the two games we haven’t had probably our full side out at any one point. It has been strange preparation. We are having to get players off after an hour when you would really be pushing to try and turn the result around.
“It is not perfect but I have been involved in these last matches going into a tournament as a player and inevitably players have one eye on what is coming in terms of some of the early challenges. No excuses on the result, we have to be better than that but there are a lot of things we can put right pretty quickly.
“We didn’t get our pressing right and we were too stretched without the ball. There were questions asked that we weren’t able to answer. No matter how much talent you have with the ball, if your out-of-possession game isn’t right then it can make it feel like you’ve not got a foothold in the game.
“We will be ready. Obviously, tonight hasn’t gone as we hoped but I said to the players at the beginning of this 45-odd days we will spend together, not every day is going to go as we want it. Tonight is one of those but we need to stay very calm.”
England kicks off Euro 2024 against Serbia on Sunday 16 June at 8:00 pm.
The post Declan Rice refelcts on England’s 1-0 loss to Iceland appeared first on AFTV.
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