The fate of the match depended on this “cruel moment” when Endrick scored for Brazil at the end of the match, commented coach Gareth Southgate after the 1-0 friendly defeat on Saturday at Wembley, where he made a wide staff review.
“We had as many scoring chances as them, but in the end, it was this merciless moment that decided the match,” said the boss of the “Three Lions”, generally satisfied with the performance of his reshuffled team.
“We had a lot of players come on, some debuts and some really important individual performances for us,” he summed up.
England was without Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jordan Henderson, Bukayo Saka, Cole Palmer, Jack Grealish or even Harry Kane, the center forward and captain, also out for the reception of Belgium on Tuesday in London.
“We need to know where we are going if Harry (Kane) is not here,” Southgate added, so “for us it was a good experience.”
In particular, he judged the match of Anthony Gordon, left winger of Newcastle, starting at 23 years old for his first call-up to the selection, “excellent”.
Playing at Wembley with the national team, “it’s the dream I’ve had for a long time,” the striker responded to the BBC. “I didn’t just imagine him over the last two years, I imagined him in the garden (when he was a child, Editor’s note) recreating Rooney and Gerrard’s goals. It’s an incredible moment.”
“Tonight was the best day of my life,” he said. For a first, “I had envisaged things a little differently, with a victory and a goal. I think we were the better team, but we lacked that edge that they had at the end.
