Eriksson Happy With England Progress
England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson was happy with his teams progress after they beat Hungary 3-1 in their World Cup warm up match.
“I’m happy and I’m sure we’ll be playing even better at the World Cup,” said Eriksson.
“You must have patience against a team defending with nine men behind the ball. We had that and started the second half very well with two goals.”
“Hungary were even better than I thought, a good side and technically very good,” he added.
Captain David Beckham said his England team-mates did well to overcome a stubborn Hungary side.
“I felt good, that’s my job to set goals up and I was lucky to have a few chances. We finished them off well,” said the Real Madrid star.
“We needed to get this game under our belts because after 20 minutes it was more difficult than we thought.”
“They stayed back off us and gave us more time on the ball at the back but in the last minutes of the first half we started to break them down well.”
“We knew if we pushed them hard in the second half we would break them down.”
“The manager and Steve McClaren said at half-time we need to press them higher - if we push them higher we can break them down.”
Meanwhile, Steven Gerrard said he enjoyed playing an attacking role in midfield, scoring the opening goal two minutes into the second half.
“There was a lot of pressure on me trying to play where Wayne Rooney plays,” he said.
“The formation suits us, Frank Lampard is superb breaking from midfield and the boss told us we can interchange.”
He added: “The most important thing was we won and we won convincingly. We could have been two or three up at half-time but we took our chances in the second half.”
