17 August 2005
Post-Match: Gary Neville
England defender Gary Neville is disappointed after the 4-1 friendly defeat to Denmark in Copenhagen.
17 August 2005
Post-Match: Michael Owen
England striker Michael Owen says that England's pride has been a little dented by friendly defeat to Denmark.

England players say they will be inspired by memories of the famous 5-1 victory in Germany as they bid to recover from defeat in Denmark.

Everybody remembers that incredible night four years ago when Michael Owen scored a hat-trick in Munich and England pulled off the result of the decade.

But what many have already forgotten is that less than a month before that game the Three Lions lost 2-0 at home to Holland in a friendly and were vilified for the result.

Goals from Mark van Bommel and Ruud van Nistelrooy sealed England’s fate that day on 15 August 2001 - but somehow Sven-Goran Eriksson’s men found the strength of character to come back.

They thrashed Germany away on 1 September the same season, and now the 2005 team are looking to make a similar recovery when they head to Wales for a World Cup qualifier next month.

Owen, hero of that day in Munich, said "We’ve shown we can bounce back and we mustn’t get carried away. We don’t think Denmark are 4-1 better than us, we beat them in the World Cup after all.

"We’re disappointed and our pride is dented but we’ll try to turn it into a positive and come back like we did against Germany after that Holland game. That proves we can do it."

Gary Neville, who also played in Munich and watched Emile Heskey and Steven Gerrard also find the net, believes memories of that day will inspire the current England side.

He said: "The media will be downbeat after the result we’ve just had but I don’t believe that will have any effect on the players. It never has in the past leading up to games.

"I think there was a match a few years ago against Holland that we lost and it was worst performance than this one, to be honest. But the next match we went on to win 5-1 in Germany. That tells you a lot.

"We’ve got to perform now in two weeks time. Nothing’s changed. If you asked us a week ago and said when do we really have to perform it would have been for the Wales game.

"I think we have got a good group of players and I don’t think that changes after one result. Ask Denmark if we have got a good group of players, they will tell you we do. But we need to perform better than we did in the second half.

"I can’t put my finger on what went wrong, but that happens sometimes in football. I think it was a freak. Somebody said it was the worst result in 20-odd years and I’m sure that will be the headline but there’s nothing we can do about that.

"We’ll analyse what went wrong before the Wales game as we always do but I think a couple of days before the game it won’t be mentioned. We’ll just get on and do our job. If we don’t do our job against Wales then we deserve whatever comes our way," he added. 

"The Wales and Northern Ireland games are the matches that really matter because we just have to get to that World Cup."