England manager, Gareth Southgate, has admitted that the World Cup’s third/fourth place play-off, is a game no one wants to play.
Southgate’s men missed the chance to play in the final, after their 2-1 defeat to Croatia in Wednesday night’s semi-final.
Asked about Saturday’s match against Belgium, who beat England 1-0 in a dead rubber group stage match on June 28, Southgate said: “The honest thing is it’s not a game any team wants to play in. We have two days to prepare. We will want to give a performance of huge pride, no question about that.
“Every time we wear the shirt of our national team, we want to play with pride and play well and win. It will be a really difficult task to assess everybody over the next 24 hours and get them mentally back to where we want them to be for a game like that, but that will be the challenge.
“We’ll be ready as a group to go again because the group have huge pride in their performances in the way they work. We have made such strides with our supporters and our public that we want to continue to do that.”
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