England 1 – 7 Spain

Half Time 0-5

It was pleasing to see a near capacity crowd on the opening day of the competition substantiating all the hard work put in by everyone to stage the event.

England were tense, perhaps even nervous at the start of the match with inconsistencies in both defence and attack giving rise to a few mistakes which cost us 2 early goals.

Then mid-way through the first half the team became more consistent in defence but were not moving off the ball to create enough space to attack.

At half-time I tried to calm the team as well as correct our tactics used in tackling both in defence and attack. This seemed to work and I was pleased to see the team’s reaction resulting in a stronger defence and creation of goal scoring opportunities in the second half illustrated by the 2-1 score.

This first game against one the best u17 teams in Europe showed that we are very competitive at this level, however we must learn to concentrate for the whole game, as results can very often be decided by details.

We now look forward to playing Andorra tonight following their 4-0 win over France
Carlos Amaral