England will open their campaign against Russian Federation before taking on Coleman’s men and Slovakia in France next year.
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Coleman said prior to the draw that he would have preferred to avoid the distraction of facing neighbor England next year, but he insists his side will relish facing a team that won all 10 of its qualifying matches.
Wales players Aaron Ramsey of Arsenal and Ashley Williams of Swansea City are Premier League regulars, while Gareth Bale of Real Madrid played for Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur before moving to Spain for a world record transfer fee of 85 million pounds in 2013. Chris has moulded the rest of the players around that well.
“We are ambitious but we know we have to work hard and that we can improve a lot”.
“It doesn’t matter who is in the group”, said Iceland’s joint coach Heimir Hallgrimsson. You take what you get, really.
“Despite having coached over 100 matches at this level with three teams (Finland, Switzerland and England), I have never come up against Russia, Slovakia or Wales”, said Hodgson. “Our support will be fantastic, and this is great for them”. “But that is why we are here, we deserve to be here and I think the tournament will be a fantastic one”. We have made a cogent case for it, the players want to do it. That is very different. Slovakia have beaten Spain, Russia will be strong. I believe if you keep doing the same thing you get the same results, and this feels different’.
“I was so honoured and proud to be here”.
“Of course, England are favourites in the group, but I think every team has a chance of making it through to the next round”.
Need to know: Including the play-offs, Sweden scored 19 goals in total in their qualification campaign and Ibrahimovic helped himself to 11 of them.
Arguably the toughest group for Northern Ireland could see them placed in a group with world champions Germany, Italy and Poland. The runner-up of Group C will play the second-place team of Group A, likely Switzerland, in the last 16.
“It couldn’t get tougher”.
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“We’re certainly looking forward to playing England”, Slutsky added, before admitting he didn’t know too much about the Welsh side. “It would be extraordinary”, said Spain coach Vicente Del Bosque, who can look forward to a rematch with Croatia after narrowly beating them at Euro 2012. We have said we want to be in a position to win the World Cup in 2022. “It’s not easy. There’s no point in me saying it is”. “We say to everyone that we must reach the semi-finals, so we must start the tournament with complete confidence”. Now we need to set up some friendly opponents to prepare; Sweden and Ireland play an English style of football, so we will try to find that kind of opponent.
