With captain Wayne Rooney leading young talents like Marcus Rashford, Dele Alli and Harry Kane, Santos expects Roy Hodgson’s men to challenge for glory.
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Rashford was chosen in Roy Hodgson for England’s Euro 2016 squad after breaking through into the Manchester Utd first team and scoring on his worldwide debut.
Rashford, who signed a new four-year contract with Manchester United on Monday, only made his first-team debut on 25 February, but scored eight goals in 18 club games to earn an worldwide call-up.
Rashford is also off the mark for the national side, taking less than three minutes of his debut last week to find the net. I hope he will play seven games in France but we need to know how to play without him.
Eighteen-year-old Marcus Rashford and injury-plagued Daniel Sturridge will both have felt fortunate to be present, with Hodgson having resolved to take all five of his striking options to France.
“I’m not hugely surprised by that, to be honest with you”, said Chris Coleman, the Wales manager, upon hearing of Rashford’s inclusion.
Rashford, 18, scored on his global debut in the 2-1 friendly victory over Australia on Friday. Together, he and Jamie Vardy, the Football Writers’ Association Player of the Year and second in Premier League goals chart, make a formidable English attack. I wouldn’t think that too many teams have had to change as often as we did, and also lose as many important players along the way as we did.
“Rashford has had that fantastic end to the season and he is a very, very interesting player” said Hodgson.
Hodgson, Ray Lewington and Gary Neville clearly saw enough from the precocious striker as, 96 days after making his club debut, they included him in the squad heading to France. “It is different, so if I can try to give them a bit of insight into that, I will”, he added.
“We were thinking about Gareth Bale”, Hodgson said when he explained why Portugal had been chosen as opponents.
England face Portugal at Wembley on Thursday in their final warm-up clash before the start of the tournament.
“I did not want to sacrifice them to shore up with players who maybe might cover positions slightly better but maybe don’t have the qualities of the players I would be leaving out”. He works so unselfishly for the team, I think he may be a big miss for the England squad.
“When I first starting playing for England I never looked at breaking the goalscoring record or getting 100 caps”.
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“I believe now that might not be the case [that Ronaldo will play] but we’re happy with the two opponents we’ve had so far [Australia and Turkey]”.
