كتب : Amro Hassan
“We showed great patience and fully deserved the win, the two goals that we scored were excellent,” Eriksson said in a press conference after the game.
The Swede tactician praised T&T’s performance and said that they produced a very solid and organized defensive display which made it even tougher on his players.
“Trinidad and Tobago defended with eight, nine or ten players behind the ball and made it very difficult for us, they showed great discipline and great strength,” Eriksson added.
On the other hand, Eriksson expressed his delight with Wayne Rooney’s successful return just 47 days after breaking a bone in his foot.
“I was very happy to see Rooney on the pitch, of course he’s not 100% fit as he has been out for six weeks, but those 30 minutes he played will be very important for him and I hope to see him get better each game we play,” Eriksson said.
Despite already securing a place in the last 16, Eriksson insisted that he won’t be taking England’s final game against Sweden lightly.
“We must now begin preparations for the Sweden game, we haven’t beaten them in a long time and it will be nice if we can do that in Cologne,” Eriksson considered.
Meanwhile, Trinidad and Tobago coach Leo Beenhakker said that despite his disappointment with the result, he is more than happy with his players’ courageous fight against England.
“Of course we are sad, but I’m very happy of the team’s effort today, we played with a lot of courage and lot of passion,” the Dutch coach said after the game.
Beenhakker said that at some points of the game he thought that the English players gave up and lost their concentration and added that he is very sad to see his team concede the goal at the time they were just growing high on confidence.
“I though that England lost patience, they had possibilities to score goals and although we found it hard to survive they started hitting long balls,” Beenhakker said.
“It was very hard to see the first goal go, our heads dropped after that and I wasn’t surprised to see them score again.”