Los Canaleros coach admits he feared ‘bigger catastrophe’

England’s explosive first half “frightened” Panama and left head coach Hernan Dario Gomez fearing one of the biggest defeats in World Cup history.

Gomez was facing a nightmare at half-time as the Three Lions rattled home five goals without reply in the first half and wondered just how bad things could get as England comfortably dealt with their rough-house tactics.

“Well, I think that the difference of goals could have been more – we could have actually conceded more goals,” said Gomez.

“As to our football, we’ve tried to play against England but there’s a huge difference between our two teams.

“To concede five goals in the first half, two penalties, two set-pieces, where England were very, very effective, well, what we did was try to avoid a bigger catastrophe.

“We managed to keep the ball in the second half a little bit more and we kept playing in an orderly fashion because had we not done that it wouldn’t have been six goals but far more.”

Gomez had no qualms about the two penalties England were awarded in the first half of a match, with Gomez saying his side “are virgins, we have been born before the due date”.

“We wanted a 0-0 in the first half, it would have been OK to have a 1-1,” the Panama coach added.

“But we were feeling rather frightened at half-time because of the huge difference between us and England, and also Belgium.

“We have learned a lot at this World Cup so far. We’ve drawn a lot of conclusions but Panama are a small, young child in football, other teams don’t really decipher our style of play.

“There was three or four goalscoring opportunities where we could have scored, but we didn’t finish properly, and England came to our box seven times and scored six.”

Substitute Felipe Baloy made history by becoming the first Panamanian player to score at a World Cup at the end of a second half that begun with Gomez making a beeline for the England dugout to speak to Southgate.

“I congratulated him,” the Panama boss said with a smile.