'Get the job done'
Tuesday, 11 August, 2009
Gareth Barry hopes to come back into a winning England team.
Despite a well publicised move to Manchester City this summer, Gareth Barry has not let his focus slip when it comes to producing his best football for both club and country.
The former Aston Villa midfielder has joined several other big money signings at City and he hopes the move will provide a positive build-up to qualification for South Africa and the competition itself in 2010.
“When you spend 12 years at a club it’s always a big decision to leave, but hopefully my decision can be backed up by the we play this year. The World Cup was in the back of my mind and I’m confident I can play a big part for Man City and go into the World Cup having hopefully qualified with a lot of confidence.”
Having scored against Kazakhstan in England’s 4-0 World Cup Qualifier victory in June, Barry missed the subsequent Qualifier – the 6-0 win over Andorra – due to suspension. However, with yet another Qualifier coming up against Croatia in September he is keen to use tomorrow’s friendly against Holland to regain his place in Fabio Capello’s team.
“I was delighted to score my first competitive goal for England but to break a run of games [in the team] was disappointing, but there is always another one round the corner and a friendly against Holland is a good game to come back into to build-up to the Qualifiers which hopefully can see us through to qualification.”
“You can understand why you want to play these games as we are playing a great team in Holland who have already qualified for the World Cup. So it’s a good test and it’s a great build-up for Croatia.
“We have some tough memories of the home game against them which we can hopefully put right.”
World Cup qualification is the priority in Capello’s camp and Barry knows that with another Premier League season due to get underway on the weekend, it would be beneficial to secure England’s berth in South Africa as quickly as possible.
“I think with England we want to get qualification done as soon as possible. I think we need two points to qualify but we have some tough games there as well so we have to respect the opponents in front of us and hopefully get the job done.”
“The main aim is the World Cup, we have three games to go and hopefully we can get the job done sooner rather than later.”
To watch the full interview with Gareth Barry, click on the video player in the top right-hand corner.