But Daniel Sturridge, who was left out of Southgate’s 23-man squad, has issued a defiant response to the naysayers by reiterating that England ought to be applauded for what they accomplished in the past month.
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Croatia, with a population of just 4.17 million, booked their place in the July 15 final at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium by beating England at the same venue 2-1 after extra time on Wednesday night. “France are a young team, Brazil are young”, he said. Both teams will be looking to erase history in the final. If they lose, they at least can take pride in making it farther along in the tournament than their country has been for multiple decades.
Speaking to LADbible after he had the tattoo done, Jamie said: “We were 5 – 0 at half-time, and I just knew”.
“The players will be thinking “I want to go home – I’ve done my job” – the game is a testimonial-type game”, he said.
Some may see this as a negative, but England’s set-piece prowess is only a good thing, as they look a threat at every corner and free-kick that they get. We keep looking to break the barriers down. But we aren’t going to make excuses.
This victory however has not been of the players alone, it has been a triumph for their manager as well.
“They played their best, it obviously wasn’t to be”.
England’s success is however not as dramatic and sudden as it seems to be. “It would have meant everything to win the game and the World Cup”.
A drummer played Bradford City favourite “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, and also “England” and the one everybody has been chanting everyday recently, “It’s Coming Home”.
This time around, we could see the stars play, or we could see some more reserves to get some guys some minutes, and that makes picking here hard. It’s important who wins. Tonight in the end we weren’t quite there but the team will be stronger for that’.
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Southgate was so demoralised by his penalty kick failure against Germany in the 1996 European Championship semi-finals, he avoided The Lightning Seeds ‘Three Lions, ‘ the team’s official song when they hosted the tournament.
