England debutant Chambers enjoys victory
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Article summary
"We put in a performance and got a win," said England debutant Calum Chambers after the 5-0 defeat of San Marino, a scoreline that Matteo Vitaioli felt was acceptable.
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• Debutant Calum Chambers is satisfied after England eased to 5-0 victory against San Marino
• "Job done," says manager Roy Hodgson after second straight Group E win
• Matteo Vitaioli singles out San Marino goalkeeper for praise
• Next games: Estonia v England (Sunday), San Marino v Switzerland (Tuesday)
Calum Chambers, England defender
[On making his full debut] I really enjoyed it, it's an honour for me to play for my country and especially get a start, and we put in a performance and got a win, which is good.
The first half they were tough to break down and it was a bit frustrating but we kept doing the things we wanted to do and eventually it paid off and we got the goals we wanted. It is difficult [playing a massed defence], you are not very used to it but you have just got to move the ball quickly, take fewer touches and do what we worked on on the training pitch and put it into practice tonight.
[On Arsenal team-mate Jack Wilshere] He did very well – he is a class player and you can see that in the games he plays at Arsenal. He is a quality player and did really well tonight.
[On Estonia] We will go into it confident … and take the positives from this game into that one.
Roy Hodgson, England manager
We kept plugging away in the first half when it was difficult to break them down. Our tempo was up in the second half because it was hard for them to keep going. It's an important job done and we can concentrate our efforts on the second game, in Estonia. San Marino were better this year [than in 2013], though as an amateur team it'll be a while before they win somewhere like Wembley, I hope.
[Jack Wilshere's] passing was outstanding in the second half and he didn't too badly first half either. It was nice to see Adam Lallana again, those wonderful touches. We didn't always convert them, but we must have had seven or eight intricate moves in the penalty box but couldn't put them away. If I was going to pick two things that impressed me most it would be the runs into the corner from the midfield and front players when we got the ball wide to the full-backs, but also the recovery runs.
Matteo Vitaioli, San Marino forward
To play at this stadium for us is always going to be very difficult. We are not professionals so we always try to keep the score down and against a team like England we produced a good display. On a personal note I was excited with the shot I had [in the first half] which went not too far wide of the goal – for a moment I hoped it might go into the net. As a team I think we gave a good performance.
We know we have a good goalkeeper [in Aldo Simoncini]. Our goalkeeper is the player who has to work the most because we concede loads of shots and he's a great goalie.
Now we have another game against Switzerland in a few days. The double-header is always a tough test for us because we are not professionals and have to try to recharge the batteries and try to get our energy levels back for the game.
Pierangelo Manzaroli, San Marino coach
Against teams of this stature, sometimes the results are worse so we take that away with us. The first half was a great performance and, had we been a bit more careful, we might not even have conceded those goals.
We knew it would be a difficult game and that they'd push us hard from the start to close the match, but we did well. It was no surprise to us that we could contain them as well as we could.