England out of Nations League finals
Leuven: England’s hopes of qualifying for the Nations League finals were ended by a 2-0 loss against Belgium yesterday.
Gareth Southgate’s side had plenty of possession against the world’s top-ranked side but were toothless in attack and ultimately undone by two early goals.
Leicester City’s Youri Tielemans opened the scoring after 10 minutes when his 20-yard shot took a deflection off Tyrone Mings, and Dries Mertens doubled their advantage 13 minutes later with a superb freekick after Declan Rice was harshly adjudged to have fouled Kevin de Bruyne.
Belgium’s second came after Romelu Lukaku had headed off the line brilliantly from Harry Kane, and while England spent much of the second half in their opponents’ half, they were unable to fashion the opportunities to work their way back into contention.
Defeat means England will not reach the finals after finishing third in 2019, when the inaugural showpiece was held in Portugal. Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson was replaced at half-time as a precaution, while Chelsea left-back Ben Chilwell limped off on 38 minutes with an apparent back injury. “We don’t like losing but enormous credit to the team,” England manager Gareth Southgate.
“All the way through they created problems and defended resiliently. I thought we were excellent. I couldn’t have enough praise for the players.
“We had a different profile of players but in those positions, I thought Jack Grealish had an absolutely outstanding game. Losing Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford, we lose a lot of speed. But I can’t fault the attacking play until the last chance.”
Belgium manager Roberto Martinez said it was good game involving two strong teams who know each other well and played each other four times since the 2018 World Cup.
“We got the early lead then we had to suffer and see the press and risk that England took. We could not utilise that in our advantage and we defended really well and showed a good focus. That pleases me a lot. You need to give credit to
England, they did very well in the second half and pushed us high up.”
Results: Slovakia 1-0 Scotland, Netherland 3-1 Bos-Herze, Georgia 1-2 Armenia, Albania 3-1 Kazakhstan, Belarus 2-0 Lithuania, Turkey 3-2 Russia, Bulgaria 1-1 Finland, Wales 1-0 Ireland, Italy 2-0 Poland, Moldova 0-2 Greece, Slovenia 2-1 Kosovo, Belgium 2-0 England.