ENGLAND 1 SLOVENIA 0

BY AYODELE ODUMADE AT WEMBLEY STADIUM

ENGLAND MANAGER Gareth Southgate gave his thoughts after England beat Slovenia in a disappointing game to qualify for the World Cup in Russia next year, thanks to a late goal by Harry Kane in stoppage time.

“Tonight highlighted where we are. We got the job done. We had to be savvy to find a way to win because we were not flowing. But what we do have though is goal scorers. The important thing was to stay resilient towards the end, which was a difficult period for the team. There was an important save from Joe Hart. We have a team that has been scoring late goals without conceding. That has been the theme of the team over the last few days.” Are we where we should be? No. I was given a job to steady the team a year ago and the objective was to qualify for Russia. Now we have an objective of how to evolve the team. Now we have to keep winning. We have to keep giving the other players an opportunity to mature. To marry all those things is difficult. “

He went on further and said: “This team is young and it is learning how to win. I could not ask anything more from them individually. They are going to improve but it is a work in progress.  They don’t have Champion’s League winner’s medals or Premier League medals. They will give everything they have got and they are going to improve over the next few years.”

We have won 6 games and drawn two. We have one of the best defences in qualifying and we have players who can score goals.   The players are suffering the consequence of 30 or 40 years ago. That is not their fault. We have got to give them belief. “

 Having qualified for Russia next week. The manager was asked if he would be releasing any players before England’s final World Cup qualifier against Lithuania on Sunday and he said: “I will not be releasing any players. It is important that we stay together as we are a squad. We want to say unbeaten and we have a responsibility to our fans.”

England will play two high profile friendlies against Germany and Brazil on the 10^th and 14^th of November, 2017, respectively at Wembley.

Meanwhile the Slovenia Manager Srecko Katanec confirmed that he would step down after the last group game. He congratulated England on their victory, having effectively been eliminated from next year’s World Cup. He said: “I think my players deserve congratulations as well. We played a decent game and they can be proud. Our plan was to resist  till the 60^th and 70^th minute and then attack them.   It was a defeat but it is in my top five games. We have a bright future. I am proud of what I did and I think the player can do much better in the next qualifiers.”