RISING SON HIRST IS SPOT ON
WHY can’t all England’s major tournaments be like this? Three wins, nine points, no fuss. When was the last time that happened?
England arrived at the Toulon tournament with minimal expectations but have finished their group on maximum points following this victory against Japan in their final match last night.
England are defending the Toulon crown, having won it in 2016 for the first time in 22 years, but clashes with other age group tournaments have left manager Neil Dewsnip with an experimental team that has produced unexpected results.
Dewsnip is a former Everton youth coach who was responsible for bringing through Wayne Rooney and Ross Barkley. Here, his team is made up of largely Under 18s, supplemented with Under 19s and 20s on the fringes of the national team, and he made multiple changes to the previous side to face Japan’s Under 19s.
‘When we first met up and had so many new faces who didn’t know each other, if you’d said we’d win all three group games at a tournament such as Toulon, I’d have been cynical,’ said Dewsnip. ‘But they’ve played three, won three.
‘We made a lot of changes so we didn’t have the fluency we had in the first two matches. But they showed a different kind of spirit, something I think is traditionally English: they refused to lose and came out the other side and I think that’s just as important sometimes.’
A minute’s silence was observed before kick-off at the Stade de Lattrede-Tassigny in Aubagne following Saturday night’s London terror attack and the players wore black armbands.
Two penalties, one in each half, were enough to top the group.
In the 25th minute, West Ham’s Daniel Kemp was pulled down in the penalty area by Kosuke Tanaka. The kick was converted by George Hirst, his fourth goal of the tournament. He is the 18-year- old son of David Hirst, the former Sheffield Wednesday striker who won three England caps in the 1990s.
Japan dominated much of the game and deserved their equaliser when substitute Mizuki Ando levelled. They controlled the tempo with impressive technical ability and short, quick passing. But England exploited their weakness to balls played behind the defence into space.
It worked late on in the match when left wing-back Dimitri Mitchell, who made his Manchester United debut against Crystal Palace at Old Trafford last month, used his speed to sprint clear of the Japanese defenders, forcing Yugo Tatsuta to foul him inside the penalty area. Chelsea’s Martell Taylor- Crossdale secured the victory.
‘If I didn’t know it already I do now; winning football matches is the best team-building exercise anyone’s every invented,’ Dewsnip said. ‘It’s amazing how they all become friends when they win.’