06 October 2006
VIDEO: Leighton Baines v Germany
Wigan defender Leighton Baines scores a screamer to give England a 1-0 first leg win over Germany.

England

1-0

Germany

Baines 77

 


UEFA European U21 Championship Play-Off first leg
Friday 6 October 2006
Ricoh Arena, Coventry City FC

Leighton Baines was delighted with his glorious 25-yard effort that won England the play-off first leg against Germany, but knows there is still a tough job at hand when the team travel to Leverkusen on Tuesday.

The Wigan left-back struck with 13 minutes left to register his first goal for England and only his second in senior football.

"I've only scored two and they were both pretty similar," he said. "I'm really pleased with it.

"The ball was played across to me and I was closed down pretty quickly so I had to make a quick decision to have a go.

"As it left my foot I knew it had a chance and as I saw it go into the net I was delighted."

A one-nil advantage is only slender against a side like Germany, but England will be pleased with the way they played in Coventry on Friday night. But for some fine goalkeeping, Peter Taylor's team could have run away with the match, and they'll need to be as equally energetic to get the required result in Germany.

Baines believes that England's players should be reaching Finals tournaments and mixing with the best players and says they are confident of earning qualification to the UEFA European Under-21s Championship Finals, which will be played in Holland next summer.

"There's too much quality for this team to miss out on that opportunity I think it's vital that we get there and it'll be a travesty if we don't. The players that we've got at our disposal should be getting to those sorts of things," he said.

"In a tournament like that, you're going to come up against top quality young players, so it's only going to help you development. As a defender, your going to come up against skilful attackers, so it's good to be able to pit your wits against their talent.

He added: "We're very confident, we've played quite well but at the same time we know we've got a really tough job. Germany are a very good team and we'll pay them the respect they deserve, but we'll go there and hopefully get a result.

"We've got as pretty grounded bunch of players, we all know the tie is far from over and we've got a lot of work still to do.

"We've really got to follow on from tonight's good performance and get a result in Germany."