England coach Southgate: Players must handle hometown boos; Scotland defended valiantly

Football
19 Jun 2021 • 2:51 PM MYT
Tribal Football
Tribal Football

Tribal Football covers news from the Premier League, LaLiga and Serie A

England coach Gareth Southgate urged calm after their disappointing 0-0 draw with Euro opponents Scotland last night at Wembley.

Southgate, who made the surprising decision to substitute captain Harry Kane for the closing stages of the game, has backed his players to bounce back from the disappointment - but admitted his team must improve after only securing a point against Steve Clarke's men.

Southgate said: "Our fans are entitled to react however they want. We have to accept whatever comes our way. We have deal and live with that.

"What I will say is that I'm totally understanding of that as manager, I totally understand anything that comes my way - what we need to do is get behind the players because there are a lot of young players that need the support of everybody.

"Most of them haven't been involved in a game like that before and they are unique occasions.

"They will learn from it and bounce back but will need everybody behind them.

"I think it was a frustrating night, we know we can play better. We've got to give Scotland credit they defended valiantly and played well.

"We didn't do enough to win the game but after that the thing we have to worry about in tournament football after that is we had to make sure we didn't lose it.

"We know it's a disappointment for our supporters, but we have to dust ourselves down and move on.

"The whole team can look at ourselves, that starts with me, we've got to be better.

"We didn't do enough to win the game tonight, not enough attempts on goal, we have to go away and look at that.

"I know exactly where this team is - it's a young team and some of them won't have experienced a night under this intensity and pressure, that's a huge learning for then. That's what we have to look at moving forward."