Carlsey dismisses any underdog tag for England
England Under-21 boss Lee Carsley has dismissed any underdog status ahead of the Young Lions' showdown with Spain. Saturday's Euro 2025 quarter-final in Trnava, Slovakia is a repeat of the 2023 final that England won 1-0 to lift the European Championship for the first time since 1984.This year, defending champions England finished second in Group B after Wednesday's 2-1 defeat by Germany while Spain were unbeaten and topped Group A. "I don't feel like an underdog. If we can perform and we can play to our ability, we've got a great chance of winning the game," Carsley said. The 51-year-old expects to have a fully fit squad - with all players training on Friday in Slovakia - as he looks to add more goals to their game.England have created the third most chances in the tournament but have scored the second lowest number of goals of the teams left.
"I believe Spain are a top team and anyone who was with us in the last few Euros knows you have to beat all of the top teams," added Carsley. "Spain are another team I've got a lot of respect for, the final we had a couple of years ago was so close. It could have gone either way. We scored a fortunate goal and played OK in the game but there's definitely a lot more to come from us if we're going to progress."Obviously the most difficult thing is to score a goal and maybe we just need that little bit of luck, we need a scruffy one."The main thing is we keep creating the chances, we keep running to the areas, we have that belief that it's going to drop and I think we can do that."
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