Spain’s Mario Gaspar celebrates with Spain’s Paco Alcacer, left, after scoring the opening goal during an global friendly soccer match between Spain and England at the Rico Perez Stadium in Alicante, Spain, Friday, November 13, 2015.
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And while goalkeepers are not often England captains, he is encouraged by the sight of Iker Casillas skippering Spain to three major tournament wins and Gianluigi Buffon leading Italy.
Harry Kane warns England teammate Wayne Rooney that he plans on snatching his goalscoring record from him later in his career.
Both teams play top sides again on Tuesday, with Spain traveling to face Belgium in Brussels and England hosting France in London for its final game of the year.
“We have to learn our lesson from it and remember when we play teams of this quality you can’t afford to make any mistakes because you’re going to get punished”.
And when Vicente del Bosque’s side lost Bayern Munich midfielder Thiago Alcantara to injury just before the half-hour mark they lost a few of their early rhythm on the ball.
England played Spain’s game and not their own. The game was pretty much as well expected and for 70 minutes I felt we held our own pretty well and, in fact, we were getting back into the game possession-wise when they scored.
“We’ve been doing well for a long time now so it’s hard when we do lose”.
That superiority was finally reflected on the scoreboard in the 71st minute, when Mario received a pass from midfielder Cesc Fabregas and executed a twirling, right-footed volley from the top of the box that gave English net minder Joe Hart no chance.
“It wasn’t good enough, I’m not making excuses”. “We’re at home, so we want to put in a good attacking performance in front of the home crowd and get the win”. “I am not prepared to suggest for one minute the pitch had anything to do with the way the game went or the fact that Spain won it”, said Hodgson.
“We knew it was going to be tough, we knew the ability they had and I thought the result flattered them, even though they had a lot of the ball”, the England vice-captain said.
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Despite losing, Hodgson also remains confident that his team can only improve between now and next summer, especially since he still has several big name players set to return from injury.
