England romped through their qualification campaign with a 100 percent record from their 10 games to bounce back from a hugely disappointing group stage exit at the 2014 World Cup.
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Hart was captain for the night as Wayne Rooney looked on from the bench, and the Manchester City man was beaten twice in the second half by a spectacular Mario Gaspar volley and a clinical Santi Cazorla strike.
England will begin their real preparations for Euro 2016 when they travel to Alicante to face Spain later this evening.
“I think as a football coach you do appreciate those comments because I think he saw maybe a few of the potential we had”, said Hodgson in response. We were hoping on the counterattack we could cause problems but we didn’t profit enough from those moments. “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.
“The opposing team has less possession of the ball because they are so good technically and pass the ball so well”. I just want to continue and concentrate on each game, each friendly game. We played against a very good team.
Spain looked a class above an experimental line-up and at times England looked in awe, sitting back as the passing “carousel” constructed by players of the pedigree of Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets weaved its way around them.
Kane was also on target in that game and could feature alongside Rooney when England host France at Wembley on Tuesday.
“Suddenly criticism comes from all corners and people listen and they might start doubting themselves”.
“Hopefully, we won’t lose confidence because there’s still a lot more to come from our game. We knew it was going to be tough and knew the ability they had”.
Hodgson continued: “The important thing is that we keep our eye on the ball”.
“We conceded the second goal with Smalling limping, so we didn’t have the best of luck in those areas”.
“He would have to recover and be fit for us to play him and the chances aren’t more than 50-50”. What will we have?
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“It was a step up, but we were close to doing it. We were close to stepping up”. “The rest of the team I prefer to keep to myself and you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see who plays and which of the players will captain the team in Wayne’s absence”. We train with each other, so we know each other’s game.
