Mar 29, 2016 After his team’s victory over Germany in a friendly match, England’s coach Roy Hodgson recently advised his wards to stay humble. The 68 year old made the comment during a post-match news conference.
“We’ve got an awful long way to go before we can claim to be like the Germans with all that they’ve achieved over the last few years. But it was a good performance and I think you’ve got to take not only pride but encouragement from good performances,”
Earlier in the game, the Germans appeared to be heading for a routine win when they led 2-0 through Toni Kroos and Mario Gomez.
However Harry Kane changed the course of the game with an opportunist goal before Vardy produced a moment of brilliance just three minutes after coming on as a substitute.
Eric Dier then sealed the victory for England, scoring from Jordan Henderson’s corner in the 91st minute.
“We are always encouraging them to show positivity, to be able to show that composure and be comfortable on the ball and don’t panic every time someone comes to pressurise you and play it off first time, be prepared to hold on to things, be prepared to risk occasionally the more difficult passes, and I think they did that very well tonight.”
Elsewhere, Joachim Loew, head coach for the German national team insisted that the English team deserved the victory.
“On the one hand it is definitely annoying to lose a game that you had been leading two-nil. On the other hand we have to be clear about it: it was not a completely undeserved loss because even when we were leading two-nil we were not in complete control of the game. We allowed [England] a lot of chances and our attacks up front were not up to our usual standard. We had problems from the beginning right through the game and we didn’t follow through on very many chances to score. So it was not an undeserved victory for England.”