GELSENKIRCHEN: England manager Gareth Southgate believes Jude Bellingham can write his own scripts at Euro 2024 after the midfielder’s goal proved decisive in England’s 1-0 win against Serbia.

Bellingham was making his first England appearance since helping Real Madrid win the UEFA Champions League, and he headed the ball past Predrag Rajkovic in the 13th minute for the only goal.

Southgate said: “Jude writes his own script. The timing of his run, and a super bit of build-up play too, and at different moments all of our forwards looked dangerous and did a really good job as a team. Today was just finishing, and a good save from the goalkeeper from a header at the end. But that will come, I’m confident we’ll start scoring goals.

“Playing against a back five, it’s not easy to create chances, but we did. One was enough, but I like the fact we had to suffer a bit without that ball, because that’s an area we’ve worked on a lot this week, and we’re so much better than we were last week.”

England were far from perfect. Trent Alexander-Arnold had a sporadic game in midfield alongside the dependable Declan Rice while Phil Foden had a torrid time of it out on the left wing.

Captain Harry Kane, who headed a rare chance against the posts in the second half, said: “I think each game will be different. Today I stayed a little bit higher because they like to play man-to-man; I wanted to keep them deep.

“I think each game will be different, sometimes I’ll drop in and sometimes higher up but I think today was more about holding the ball up, especially in that second half and trying to see the game out like we did.”

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