England coach Gareth Southgate insists his team will approach Sunday’s FIFA World Cup 2022 knockout game with Senegal with caution.
The knockouts begin for the #ThreeLions!
🆚 Senegal
🏆 @FIFAWorldCup Round of 16
🏟 Al Bayt Stadium
🕖 7pm GMT
📺 @ITV pic.twitter.com/7Dn4v9x1tV— England (@England) December 4, 2022
The Three Lions face the African champions in the round of 16 in Doha, with a place in the quarter-final at stake.
And having emerged from the group stage with two victories and a draw against the USA, Southgate and his staff have been preparing the players for their next test.
Ahead of Sunday’s match against Senegal, England coach Gareth Southgate said, “Now, we’ve got a different challenge again – a team that are very confident, the African champions, so they come with that feel about them.”
“They have different threats to the other teams that we’ve played and also, defensively a little bit different.
“We’re under no illusions that that’s going to be a really difficult game.”
Looking back at last week’s victory over Wales, which secured their place in the round of 16, Southgate admits there are areas to improve on but was also pleased with their second-half display.
“I think we have reviewed it and, definitely, in the first half, we feel that we could’ve used the ball even better than we did,” he said.
“We had control of the game but we didn’t really create as many chances as we’d have liked to. In the second half, once we got the first goal, the second one followed so quickly and the game changes completely.
As always, there are things that we were really pleased with but also things that we can be even better at,Gareth Southgate added.
Bengali