‘Played as well as I recall’

Novgorod tomorrow he said: “To play with the freedom, energy and pace we did was as good as anything I’ve seen in the tournament up to this point.

“Every team will want to improve but we hit a level that is comparable to anything I’ve seen.

“The team we selected for the first game performed as well as I can remember us playing with the ball in the first hour of the game. We just want to keep performing at a level that excites the country and conducting ourselves with some humility because we’ve won one game, but that’s it, we’ve a long way to go to be the team we want to be.

“We’ve to keep hitting those standards, keep seeking perfection all the time – although we know that will never happen. That is the job – to get better all the time. If we are looking after performances then results will come.

“To win a game in any tournament at any level is really difficult. We are seeing that with some of the top ranked countries in the world.”

One area Southgate says England need to improve is finishing after missing a glut of chances in Volgograd – and not be so reliant on skipper Kane.

“The obvious thing to improve upon is the number of chances we took,” he said. “We’ve not been as prolific as we’d like but in the last six or seven games we are creating chances.

“It’s always better if we are scoring from different areas and the players we selected the other night had a really high goal return in the Premier League – they are in the squad on merit and if they keep making the chances I’m sure they will score.”