ENGLAND COACH GARETH Southgate was keeping his feet firmly on the ground after England’s 6-1 World Cup group-stage rout of Panama, declaring “I didn’t particularly like the performance”.
With a grin Southgate explained to the BBC: “I’m being hyper-critical, but I didn’t like the start, I didn’t like the goal at the end. The bits in the middle were pretty good though!”
Southgate was speaking after a hat-trick from Harry Kane, a double from John Stones and another from Jesse Lingard saw off Panama and qualified England into the knockout stages.
As it stands England are level on goal difference with also-qualified Belgium but top the group by virtue of yellow cards — two compared to the Belgians’ three.
The countries meet in Kaliningrad on Thursday.
Asked about possible changes to his XI to face Belgium, Southgate commented: “I want to keep the momentum, we have to think about the team we want to put out, it’s an opportunity for players who need a match who haven’t played for a while but on the other hand we want to keep winning.
“It’s a nice decision to have!”
Reflecting on a record World Cup win for England — their previous best result was 3-0 — he added: “I was a bit anxious at the start, they (Panama) had six at the back and three in middle, but once we worked that out I thought we played some really good stuff for 35 minutes.
Southgate’s main gripe was his defence allowing Felipe Baloy to score Panama’s first ever World Cup goal in the 78th minute.
“At half-time we talked about one more goal to be top of the group, that’s why the goal at the end was disappointing,” he said.
“We’d rather be in control of the group than not, and confidence wise it’s important to score goals.
“It was a big moment for Lingard and great for the captain (Kane) to score a hat-trick, that way he didn’t have the hump when I took him off!”
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GAA don’t care about anything but the airgead
The CPA proposals are not realistic. The month of April for Club fixtures? 1. It’s right in the business end of the National leagues. 2. Clubs aren’t and shouldn’t be ready for championship at that time of year. The finals are not until October.
The club finals work well on St Patricks day. It gives them the publicity and spotlight that they deserve. The alternative as proposed is to play them in late November/December. That’s not acceptable imo.
@Tim Dawson: club leagues should be started in early/mid February and ran off every week (or pretty much every week) which would have most leagues ran off by the end of April. Semi finals and finals to be ran off and completed by May/June. Club championships can then be started in April, not sure why you think this is too early as every club will be training since January? Not sure why if you start a champing April you couldn’t have it completed early August at the latest, which would allow provincials and all ireland series played out before the end of October.
Have a rigid fixture list in place and lose this nonsense of having 3/4 week gaps between games.
@Robert Callaghan: hem! Because there is also the intercounty league and championship and clubs will not play without their county players. The national league is played in April. That’s why you can’t have club championship then. Or are we now talking about punishing the county player for being better and flogging them to death?
@Tim Dawson: grand, start it in May then, or move National Leagues to March and get rid of the O’Byrne/McKenna cup preseason comps to freely time. The General point being that we have less gaps between games and a rigid calendar. The whole thing from intercounty down needs to be restructured because it’s broken.
Are you happy then to leave the fixture system the way it is and ignore the overwhelming opinion of club players? For what, because the club championship final has to be played on St. Patrick’s Days because it always has?