Captain Bjorn praises his side’s team spirit

Europe’s captain Thomas Bjorn is adamant it was his team’s impressive performance – and not the divisions that have since emerged among the Americans – that was the key to their success in winning the Ryder Cup.

Bjorn oversaw a convincing 17.510.5 victory in Paris, since when Patrick Reed had been critical of Jordan Spieth and Jim Furyk and there have been reports of a fall-out between Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson.

The US team featuring 11 of the world’s top 17 players had been the favourites to win in Europe for the first time in 25 years, but even amid the dysfunction they have gradually demonstrated they were confronted by a team that excelled.

The 47-year-old Bjorn has praised the team spirit among his players, and he said: “Sometimes you’ve got to go with one team played better than another; somebody’s going to win and somebody’s going to lose.

“This time it was our turn; I don’t want to put too much on if anything went wrong in their team room. I don’t believe in that. Obviously when you lose sometimes it can be hard and difficult to deal with, when you have expectations of yourself.

“From what I saw from the outside I thought Jim (Furyk, the US captain) did a good job.

“It just didn’t work out for them this way but I would like to put it down to our 12 players just playing really, really well.”