LONDON: England manager Roy Hodgson was pleased with the outcome and evidence after England beat Denmark 1-0 at Wembley in their penultimate home friendly before they head off to the World Cup finals in June.

Liverpool’s Daniel Sturridge scored a late winning goal in the last England international before Hodgson must name his 23-man squad for the trip to Brazil.

Hodgson said: “The pressure has been on as to how are you going to choose 23 when there are so many good players to choose from? Nobody did their cause any harm, in fact many of them did their cause a great deal of good.

“It’s really going to be a question now of seeing what happens in the next two months in the league matches that I’ll be watching and the Champions League matches that I’ll be watching and hoping that I still have the same problem come May 13. There are certainly more than 23 England players who deserve to be on the plane.”

Hodgson was satisfied with the performance.

‘Encouragement’

He said: “It was a dominant performance, I thought. Especially our second half performance has given us a lot of encouragement.

“In the first half we worked hard but didn’t get the ball in behind as many times as I would like. Sometimes our passing was a bit too slow but we sharpened up in the second half and were good value for our victory. I’m delighted that so many players that were making debuts or playing one of their early games for England did so well.”

Hodgson was particularly pleased with Southampton full-back Luke Shaw. The highly-rated 18-year-old mde his England senior debut as a second-half substitute for 107-cap Ashley Cole.

“I thought he did exceptionally well,” said Hodgson, “and it was even harder for him because Ashley Cole had played so well in the first half.

“He took to that like a duck to water. He didn’t show any signs of nervousness or anxiety.”

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