‘A bit too soon’ to take positives from loss
MOSCOW: England coach Gareth Southgate said his team needs to ‘‘suffer’’ its loss to Croatia in the World Cup semifinals and understand the opportunity it passed up before pondering the positives from its remarkable campaign.
Southgate’s team made a fine start to its quest to become the first England side to reach the final in 52 years but faded in the second half before going down 21 to the Croatians after extra time at the Luzhniki Stadium.
Given England arrived in Russia as a rank outsider, however, Southgate was invited to detail the positives from a campaign that appears to have repaired the strained relationship between England and its team.
‘‘I think that’s maybe something for a couple of days time. At the moment we all feel the pain of this defeat,’’ he told reporters.
‘‘Did we expect to be in this position? I don’t realistically think any of us did. But when you’ve got to this point and played as well as we have . . . you want to take these opportunities in life.
‘‘The dressingroom is a really difficult place at the moment. There will in time be positives to take — it’s very hard now to put that into context, it’s a bit too soon, really, because I think you have to suffer the result a little bit.
‘‘It’s too easy to sometimes move on too quickly.’’
Gifted a relatively soft draw by the early exit of a number of traditional World Cup superpowers, England reached the semifinals of a major tournament for the first time since Euro 1996, when Southgate was part of the team.
It had only previously been in the World Cup semifinals in 1966, when it won the title on home soil, and 1990, so Southgate said he was trying to balance his pride in his young team with remembering how rare such chances are.
‘‘Tonight was a wonderful opportunity for us and you can’t guarantee that those opportunities will come again,’’ he added.
‘‘But equally we want to be a team that’s hitting quarterfinals, semifinals, finals — that was what we’ve aimed to do in the long term and we’ve proved that is possible.
‘‘We’ve proved to ourselves that is possible and we’ve proved to our country that is possible. Now we have a new benchmark, a new level of expectation. Many of these players have come of age and I couldn’t be prouder of them.’’
Southgate said playing regularly in big matches was a key stage of development for his players and that the way they dropped away in the second half was perhaps a result of their inexperience. — Reuters