Experience crucial for Eastick and England

Having come close to glory already this summer, Brian Eastick is in no mood to let another opportunity slip as he takes England into the UEFA European Under-19 Championship – although the coach believes tournament experience is the most important thing on offer.

Learning curve
Part of the coaching staff at last month's U21 tournament – when England reached the final – Eastick guided his U19 charges to last summer's European Championship in the Czech Republic, although they failed to progress from the group stage, and believes the finals form a crucial part of a young player's learning curve. "Our main objective is to qualify for as many tournaments as possible, not just because we want to win but also because playing at a final tournament is a vital experience for all young players," he told uefa.com. "That's particularly true if we want to prepare them for a senior tournament and create a winning mentality."

'Good couple of years'
Eastick is coming to the end of his third season in charge of the U19s and is pleased to see his labours with U16 head coach Kenny Swain and John Peacock, who led much of this season's U19 squad to the 2007 U17 final, bearing fruit. "It's been a good couple of years for England," he said. "Both last year and this we've been good enough to qualify and this will make a huge difference when some of these players get to senior level. In some ways we have achieved our objective, but we have a great squad with plenty of depth and the players certainly learned some valuable lessons from the whole experience last year. It sounds clichéd but we really do have to take each game as it comes with perhaps one eye on the game after that."

Tall order
A year ago England lost their opening fixture to the Czech Republic, a defeat Eastick believes defined their campaign, and this time round open up against Switzerland before games against hosts Ukraine and Slovenia. "Switzerland have a great system for developing young players so they will be tough and Slovenia are very much an emerging nation at this level and are developing a lot of good players. Playing Ukraine will be interesting; they'll have the crowd behind them and be playing in familiar surroundings but that can also be a disadvantage as they will be under a lot of pressure to do well and if things don't click straight away then we could take advantage. We'd like to mirror what we did at the U21s and win the opening two games because that really takes the pressure off and allows you to use all of your squad, but we would simply be happy to come through the group phase."

'Learn to adapt'
Eastick is clear where his side will have to improve to fulfil that ambition, adding: "Our first aim is always to keep a clean sheet but we need to learn to adapt our game so we can beat all types of opposition. There are so many different styles in Europe and perhaps English players expect every game to be fast and furious right through the 90 minutes. Playing against teams that drop off deep is a little different to what they're used to and we need to make sure we can deal with this. We also need to develop an ability to close games down by keeping the ball which is something that doesn't necessarily come naturally to an English player."