Danish
Referee
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But it was a good loss.
We are an average team and would have been beaten 3 nil by Brazil.
So by losing it gave us our only chance of ever making a final in my lifetime - by taking advantage of a soft draw.
I'm under no illusions as to England's quality. We're well below the elite teams and somewhere just above the likes of Sweden.
We're probably on a rung with the likes of Uruguay and Croatia.
That's our level. I know this because we haven't beaten a world class side in the knock out phase of a major tournament since Euro 96. And even that took penalties to beat Spain.
Before that you'd probably have to go back to the 1966 World Cup to when we beat one of the big guns.
So we are an average footballing nation and that strategic loss gave us our only chance of making a world cup final. So of course we were happy about it.
No point trying to fluke your way to a World Cup. This isn’t rugby or something where there are only a couple of teams that you could potentially steer clear of and hope they get knocked out.
better to try and maintain momentum and a winning run than deliberately resting players and playing for a loss