GARETH SOUTHGATE SAYS ENGLAND HAT TRICK HERO RAHEEM STERLIN WAS DEVASTATING
South gate praised Raheem Sterling’s “devastating” performance
and the manner in which he has turned around his international career as
England started their Euro 2020 qualifying campaign with a 5-0 victory over
Czech Republic.
Sterling
contributed a first hat-trick and won a penalty converted by Harry Kane before
retiring to a standing ovation having scored five goals in his last three England appearances.
Southgate said the Manchester City forward, as one of the more experienced and
influential members of the squad, has graduated to become a member of the
national team’s in-house leadership group. Raheem was very brilliant, electric all night,” the
England managerhas said. “He’s in a really confident moment, not only on the
field but off the field he is so very mature and comfortable in himself. So I’m
delighted for him to get the reaction that he did from the crowd. We can’t hide
from the factthat he’s had difficult moments with England and he’s turned that
full circle.
“The
goals in Spain [his first in 28 caps] were an important moment for him; you
could see the release that had brought. His finishes there and tonight were
finishes that he was just taking on without thinking too much. At times you
could almost see the thought process in the past but he’s hungry for those
goals.
“I
know he’s spoken about that before, of how he’s added that incentive to his
game, and I thought he was devastating tonight. He’s a role model for the
younger players coming in and he’s enjoyed that extra responsibility as well.”
Sterling
lifted his shirt after scoring his second goal to display a tribute to Damary
Dawkins, a 13-year-old member of Crystal Palace’s elite player development
centre who died last week after four years with a acute lymphoblastic
leukaemia, who died last weekend of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. “Damary was
a kid I was trying to help and we thought we’d found a donor,” he said. “Sadly
it didn’t match and he passed away, so I wanted to give his family something to
smile about.”
England capped Declan Rice off the bench and ended the game with
two 18-year-olds on the pitch for the first time in 138 years. Jadon Sancho set
up the opening goal and Callum Hudson-Odoi – England’s youngest competitive
debutant, beating Duncan Edwards in 1955 – playing a part in the team’s fifth.
“To
finish with two young wingers was really exciting and, again, was only what
we’d seen during training this week,” said Southgate, who has released Eric
Dier back to Tottenham with a hip injury. “They don’t feel inhibited around the
camp, so they don’t feel inhibited on the pitch and you could see that by the
way they played on the pitch.
“I
thought Jadon made a really good contribution for the first goal. It was a bit
of a mixture outside of that, but that’s wing players; we’re asking them to try
things, we’re asking our attacking players to take players on and as the coach
you have to accept they’ll fail a number of times and the times they succeed
we’ll create chances and we’ll create goals.
“Callum
had an opportunity to play with the freedom he’s shown all week, and I thought
he displayed that. He’ll be another player that maybe people at home watching
won’t have seen so much of and I’m sure they’ll have seen a lot of things that
excited them.”
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