‘PREM DATES A DISASTER’
England as they have been doing for City.”
Sterling scored 23 goals in all competitions last season. He won the Premier League title, the League Cup, and played a major role in England’s march to the World Cup semi-final, so it’s no wonder Europe’s top clubs are casting admiring glances.
But he knows that to be rated one of the best in Europe he has to get among the goals for England.
Harry Kane has gone six games without a goal for England and Marcus Rashford missed two big chances against Croatia on Friday, but Sterling is convinced the goals will come for Gareth Southgate’s new-look front three.
The Etihad flyer (with Southgate, left) said: “When you haven’t scored for a while you just need the right chance to come along. You have to stay positive and keep getting into the box.
“We had some good chances against Croatia and the goals will come, I’m sure of that. I believe in myself. We played well in the second half in Croatia and we created big opportunities. On another day they would have found the back of the net.
“I’m not making excuses but the pitch didn’t help either. It was like going back to playing on a playground because the pitch kept ripping up. But we played some really good stuff at times against a difficult opponent.”
Sterling says tonight’s opponents
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Spain, who beat England 2-1 at Wembley last month, will provide the ultimate test in the Nations League as he stressed the importance of not finishing bottom in the group.
“Spain are most definitely one of the best three teams in the world,” said the City star (tackled by Croatia’s Dejan Lovren, right).
“The players they’ve got, the way they keep the ball, I don’t think there’s another national team that does what they do and they can really punish you if you’re not confident and don’t keep the ball.
“In the game against Spain, I’d say you have to try to stop them dominating the ball even though it is a tough task. You can’t give the ball away cheaply because they will GARETH SOUTHGATE blasted the Premier League for leaving players in an “impossible situation”.
Southgate is unhappy the league started on August 10, which was just 26 days after the World Cup final with England reaching the semis and playing in the third-place play-off.
Three Lions boss Southgate joked Prem bosses never expected England to get so far as La Liga started on August 17, Serie A on August 18 and the Bundesliga on August 24. Southgate, who is paying a heavy price with fatigued players at clubs after seeing the likes of Dele Alli (above) and Jesse Lingard pull out injured, said: “I don’t really understand why our league started so early, but they did, so it’s been a really difficult situation for the clubs.
“Some of the clubs couldn’t field a team. Look at Tottenham, who had so many players in the semi-finals of the World Cup. Maybe they were expecting us to be back by the end of June!”
make you run around to get back. But I feel we had more freedom against Croatia on Friday. We tried to mix it up as well because it wasn’t always to feet. We made some runs in behind and, probably on a better day, on a better pitch, we could have really caused havoc.
“Having someone like Marcus up front is really helpful as well with his pace and his ability on the ball.
“Hopefully against Spain we’ll make it work.”
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