“I’m not saying England don’t have passion – I’m sure they do”, he added.
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Local pride is at stake on Thursday as an all-British clash between England and Wales and old rivals Germany and Poland dominate a Euro 2016 day of high tension.
Having won their opening game against Slovakia, Bale insists that there is no pressure on Wales going into the England game.
Bale has suggested that the three lions do not have the same sort of passion about playing for their country as the Welsh lads and that England tend to be arrogant and assume they will do well before they get a chance to play so it is hardly surprising that his words have not gone down well in the England camp.
“People like to take things out of context but I stand by my comments”.
“It’s good that they bit”, he joked. “They’re entitled to their opinion. I feel we’ve got a massive team spirit, one of the best I’ve seen”.
“If you put both teams down on paper, we would win the game but it doesn’t work like that in football”.
“They’re obviously the team we know the most about and we’re confident that we can upset them”. This championships will tell us a lot about Alli as at worldwide level, defences are much better organised and he will have to create his own space, whereas in the Premier League, it is less tactically focused and there is a lot more space in the final third.
Wales have not beaten England since 1984 and lost 1-0 at Wembley in September 2011 in their last meeting.
“We know they’re a bigger nation with more players to choose from but we’ve closed the gap massively”, he said.
We were under pressure for a while in the second half, but to come through that and get ourselves a winning goal was nothing short of heroic.
“Everyone in the group would take this game because a lot of us play in the Premier League and play against those individuals week in week out”.
“We’ve two games left, we’re not going to prepare differently for Wales”.
“It’s a matter of total disinterest to me because none of those Welsh players are available to play for England”, said Hodgson.
“I never said that they didn’t have passion and pride, I just feel that we have more”.
“We know they are a good team and we know we are a good team”.
One enterprising group attempted to fool a bar owner into giving them free drinks by claiming to be members of the Football Association of Wales backroom team. But with Robson-Kanu, Joe Ledley and potentially Wayne Hennessey back, we could have our first-choice team playing. It’s about time we changed that.
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“Many people in Britain are looking forward to this game, we certainly are, and maybe around the world”.
