SAMARA: England manager Gareth Southgate considered that England had an edge in quality which made a decisive difference in the 2-0 victory over Sweden in the 2018 World Cup quarter-final in Samara.

Harry Maguire and Dele Alli scored a goal in each half to lift England into the semi-finals for the first time since 1990 and only the third time in all.

Southgate said: “We knew we would have the majority of the ball, the question was whether we could break them down. We’d identified a few areas where we might do that and we got the goals from both of them.

“We scored from set plays because we got into good areas on the pitch. Sweden are well-organised, they make things tough and over the years we’ve underestimated them. Today, our spirit was as good as theirs but our quality was a little bit better.

“We are a team who are still improving. We’re not the finished article, we don’t have renowned world class players yet but lots of good young players who are showing on the world stage that they are prepared to be brave with the ball and showing some mental resilience.

“In years to come they will be stronger but today was a huge opportunity and not something we wanted to miss out on.

“They’ve all worn the shirt as a kid and now theyre proud to wear it as a player.”

Sweden manager Janne Andersson said: “We didn’t reach our best. It’s very frustrating because I felt we had things under control until they had that corner.”

##################