Manchester United defender Chris Smalling’s late goal sealed a third victory in as many friendly matches for England.
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Last night’s performance will hardly have struck fear into England’s forthcoming opponents, but having selected the youngest squad of all the 24 teams competing in France, Hodgson insists that is not necessarily a bad thing.
And Kane confessed England would need to spend time fine-tuning the formation before their first match at the Euros against Russian Federation on June 11. I don’t get it. “I don’t think that’s specific to me and my job as England manager”.
Though Portugal have a relatively easy group with Austria, Iceland, and Hungary, which makes them the favourites to qualify for the knockouts, Ronaldo claimed that the group stage is always tough and everyone will have to perform extremely well to progress to the second round.
“They [Portugal] committed a lot of challenges and went down on quite a few occasions”, said Hodgson.
England’s forwards struggled to make an impact as Kane and Jamie Vardy, the Premier League’s top two scorers last season, were shunted out wide to make way for captain Wayne Rooney centrally.
“It can be a small margin which can benefit you, but the other things we’re doing and planning completely out-weigh that”.
“It is a good problem to have, shoe-horning in attacking players”, said Hodgson when asked about the many options at his disposal.
‘You’re talking about the player who has played 111 games for England and scored 53 goals so perhaps his best position is anywhere on the field.
“The manager is working on the three up front”.
“It’s always hard with 10 men, especially against England in this atmosphere”.
“I don’t intend to come on the television or radio and to start telling people exactly what I think in terms of what worked and didn’t work”, Hodgson told BBC Radio 5 live. It is our third win and one against a Portugal team ranked higher than us in the Federation Internationale de Football Association rankings, so no reason to be dissatisfied.
“In the two-and-a-half weeks we’ve been together, we’ve had a very intensive time. I want to teach players how to defend better, attack better and that’s what I’ve been trying to do for four years and will continue to do so”.
“We are winning when we are not playing well”.
But Hodgson said he was not about to alter his stance and start teaching his players to adopt a more cynical approach to the game. Have I decided my best 11? That’s always going to be hard because it depends on the night.
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“I think there are more combinations and options available to Roy in this squad than there have been in a lot of squads since I’ve played”.
