England head coach, Gareth Southgate, has acknowledged the challenges his team faced during their 1-0 victory over Serbia at EURO 2024 but expressed satisfaction with many aspects of their performance.
The Three Lions secured their win thanks to Jude Bellingham’s first-half header and held on through a defensive second half.
Southgate noted that his team began the game stronger than they ended it and expressed hope for continued improvement as the tournament progresses.
He pointed out that, despite finishing as runners-up in the last Championships, they had to withstand considerable pressure in the second half of this match.
“Serbia are a strong team,” Southgate remarked. “We had to suffer a bit, which I think is really good for us to come through and to defend our box in the way we did under pressure is important for the group. That’s the reality of tournaments.
“We had good chances to extend the lead and kill the game, which we didn’t manage to take. I was really pleased with a lot of the play, especially the first half. I thought we used the ball really well. Second half we didn’t keep it quite as well as we need to but to get the win and the start that we have is really important.”
Southgate also commended Bellingham, along with Trent Alexander-Arnold, who played in midfield alongside Declan Rice.
“He [Bellingham] writes his own scripts,” Southgate said. “The timing of his run, it’s a super bit of play in the build up to his goal as well. I thought at different moments all of our forward players looked dangerous and did a job for a team.
“Today was just the finishing. It was good save from the goalkeeper from Harry Kane’s header at the end. That will come, I am confident we will score goals. You are playing against a back five, it is not easy to create chances but we did. In the end one was enough. I liked the fact we had to suffer a bit, that’s an area we have worked on a lot this week and we were so much better than last week in doing that.
“I have to say Trent has been really diligent in getting his positioning right, balancing it off as Jude goes forward a lot. I thought Trent adapted and adjusted to his positioning really well. He used the ball well and had a really good effort on goal. In the end we wanted some fresh legs in there and Conor [Gallagher] can get to the ball quickly. We have a squad and we need to use it.”
