Juan Mata had a chance to double Spain’s lead four minutes later when he was through on goal but Hart did well to block his effort before Nolito teed up Cazorla to stroke the ball into the bottom corner six minutes from time.
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The result put an end to England’s 14-game unbeaten streak, which dated back to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
“It doesn’t look good – he has severely twisted ankle, [which] normally means ligament damage, but we won’t know until X-ray or scan tomorrow”, Hodgson said.
“This is one game where I don’t think we’ve been out-classed, We were in the game”.
The game was pretty much as well expected and for 70 minutes I felt we held our own pretty well and, in fact, we were getting back into the game possession-wise when they scored. We needed to keep up a high level of defending right the way through the 90 minutes and we needed to be a little bit better when we had counterattacking opportunities, with our final pass or our final strike at goal.
“We were hoping that on a counter-attack we could cause them a few problems”.
“It [the pitch] wasn’t good enough but I’m not making excuses”.
Hodgson brought debutant Eric Dier on for Delph while Dele Alli replaced Adam Lallana.
“We’ve got players that are capable of that, but so have they, as they have proven, but it was a great goal”. “You have to give Spain credit for the quality of their pressure”.
Sturridge, who has played only three times this season, has scored two league goals. My big thing is with the Barkleys, the Lallanas, the Sterlings is ‘don’t doubt yourself, keep doing it. We will get stronger’. “Their pressure caused us to lose a bit of composure”.
England will remain in Spain until Saturday before they return to London for an equally tough test against Euro 2016 hosts France.
“We’ll have to see”, he said.
“The gap might be a gap in terms of their style of play, which is very possession-based, and our style of play, which is probably less possession-based”, Hodgson is quoted as saying by The Mirror.
“Can we match them with clever passing?” We need to dust ourselves off and perform better against France (on Tuesday).
“I’m sure the England team and our fans will play their part and show solidarity with our French friends on Tuesday evening and provide support for both teams during this hard time”.
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“We’ve come to Spain, who haven’t lost in nine years, they’re the reigning champions of the tournament we’re about to go into and they’re going to be exhausted after that game”.
