Watch England Manager speak about his squad for UEFA EURO 2012 on FATV.

By Nicholas Veevers

Click here to watch the full video interview.

England Manager Roy Hodgson named his squad for the European Championship Finals at Wembley on Wednesday afternoon and sat down with FATV to discuss his choices and the plans from here until the trip to Poland and Ukraine next month.

Hodgson announced his 23-man squad, along with five stand-by players and the group will now meet up next week in Manchester ahead of his first game in charge against Norway on 26 May and then the final Wembley send-off against Belgium at Wembley a week later.

“It’s been a very agonising process, it’s never easy when there’s so many quality players to discuss and think about and then finalise the squad,” admitted Hodgson to FATV, in his first interview after revealing his squad.

“But I’m really pleased with the squad that has been put together now. It’s very well balanced and it’s interesting that a lot of the players in the squad have helped England to get to this stage.

“I’m more than happy with the squad and I believe in it. I think we have a group of players who will do England proud in the tournament.”

Hodgson also revealed that his captain will be Steven Gerrard, a player he knows better than most after managing him during his spell in charge of Liverpool in 2010.

“I think Steven has more than proved his worth as a player and as a captain for Liverpool,” he added.

“I also know Steven well as a person, a player and a captain from my time at Liverpool and I had no hesitation in naming him as captain.

“I informed him of this yesterday afternoon and I took him by surprise with that, so he was really pleased to be awarded the captaincy.

“I’m sure that in Steven we find a man who will not only lead by example, but he will be a very important person around the other players in the squad to make certain that we get the team unity, togetherness and environment which will hopefully give us a chance for the players to produce their best form out on the field of play.”

The squad were originally scheduled to head for a pre-Euros training camp in Spain ahead of the Norway game, but given the situation for a large proportion of the players and their ongoing club commitments, that trip has now been cancelled.

“It’s been forced upon us to some extent,” he explained.

“When it was planned we had no idea that Chelsea would be in the Champions League Final, we had no idea Rob Green would be in the Play-Off Final and we had no idea that Manchester City would win the Championship in such incredible style and then have three days of basically celebrating it with the events that had been hastily put together afterwards.

“So we found ourselves with a group of players who could have gone to La Cala which was a lot smaller than the original 23 which we were planning to take, so we found ourselves trying to add to those numbers just to make the journey worthwhile.

“So we decided to wait until the Wednesday and transfer the camp back to England, so we can base ourselves in Manchester and use the Etihad Stadium, a lot of the players are from the North West and it also shortens the journey to Oslo which is a further benefit.”

Watch the full interview with Hodgson, in which he discusses more issues from his selection right now on FATV.