England

4-1

Holland

Morison (pen) 36, Charnock 40, Boyd 72, Mackail-Smith 77

 

Thé 5

European Challenge Trophy
7.45pm, Wednesday 29 November 2006
Burton Albion FC

England National Game XI Coach Paul Fairclough was delighted to see his team come from behind to beat Holland 4-1 at Burton Albion and lift the first ever European Challenge Trophy.

The Barnet manager said that work on the training field had prepared his side for what might have been and, when the Dutch took a fifth minute lead, he was confident his players would know what to do to get back into the match.

In the end, goals from debutant Steve Morison, Kieran Charnock, George Boyd and Craig Mackail-Smith secured a comfortable win making it a very proud night for Fairclough and the England set-up.

"I thought it was an outstanding performance," he told TheFA.com after the final whistle. "We knew that we didn’t want to be beaten and when they scored early on it was a case of how we respond to that and we did so magnificently.

"We were prepared for that, that’s all part of the work we do with the players. We do a series of ‘what ifs?’ and how to respond to those, so it wasn’t a reaction to that, we got a response to an eventuality that we had prepared for. When it happened and we went behind, we knew what we had to do.

He added: "Some teams panic when they go behind, but there is a lot of work that goes into these players working on these situations. They remained relaxed and got on with the job."

And after seeing his team come close on several occasions - three times seeing efforts repelled by Dutch keeper Sven Taberima, Fairclough was sure his side would soon find their way back into the match.

"We’d created chances before they went in front, Craig [Mackail-Smith] should have scored, so we knew that there was a lot of football to be played still and we went on to created a few decent opportunities. I said before we drew level that we will score, there are too many quality players for us not to get at least one. And that’s exactly what happened in the end.

"In the second half we just wanted to keep doing what we were good at. We had a game plan and we stuck to that and rounded off the night quite comfortably with two more goals."

Fairclough also reveal what it meant to be crowned champions after seeing the European Challenge Trophy finally come to fruition after a great deal of work from the associations involved.

"I feel really proud to have achieved what we have. To see this competition get off the ground is fantastic. We were playing too many meaningless friendlies and we needed to have the opportunity to play competitive matches with something at stake.

"A lot of hard work went in to setting the tournament up and it’s a real honour to have ended up as winners of this first ever competition.

"Winning this tournament is great for the team, they have all played very well tonight, and so too the lads from the other two games who couldn’t be with us tonight."

Fairclough added: "We had ten debutants playing tonight, so for them it’s extra special, lifting a trophy on their first outing for the National Team. It shows the quality of player that is playing outside the Football League in this country."

England
1 Arran Lee-Barrett (13 Lance Cronin, 81), 2 Adam Yates, 3 Scott Griffiths, 4 Adam Quinn, 5 Craig Stanley (c), 6 Kieran Charnock, 7 Giuseppe Sole, (16 Les Afful, 76), 8 Michael Carr (14 Lewis Chalmers, 70), 9 Steve Morison (15 Clayton Donaldson, 63), 10 Craig Mackail-Smith (12 Michael Morrison, 81), 11 George Boyd.

Coach: Paul Fairclough

Holland
1 Sven Taberima, 2 Raymond Bolt (12 Jordy Meester, 75), 3 Djimmi van Putten (c), 4 Peter Post, 5  Henri de Graaf (13 Bart Freke, 60), 6 Taner Ozbek, 7 Patrick Duarte, 8 Michael Thé (15 Martijn Jansen, 68), 9 Donovan Mijnhals (17 Elroy Lammers, 60), 10 John Schot (14 Niels Buitenhuis, 60), 11 Istvan Bakx.
Subs not used: 16 Gijs Roelofsen, 18 Joey van de Berg   

Coach: Marco Bout

Match Officials
Referee: Gary Sutton (Lincolnshire)
Assistants: David Benton (Sheffield & Hallamshire) and Steven Cook (Surrey)
Fourth Official: Graham Horwood (Bedfordshire)

Colours
England: White Shirts, Navy Shorts, White Socks
Holland: Orange Shirts, White Shorts, Blue Socks

Photos: Phil Mingo - www.ppauk.com/