Speaking exclusively to TheFA.com for England TV Scholes admitted that all the press attention regarding his lack of goalscoring had affected him, and he was just glad to have ended the three-year hiatus:

"It's been a long while since I scored – three years. When you’re are a goalscorer you want to be scoring goals,so there was a sense of relief to get one.

"But the most important thing was that we played well and whoever scored it didn’t really matter as long as we got the right result.

"It was a great game to be involved in but I still think there is room for improvement - we could keep the ball better for instance.

"In the second half especially, when you’re two or three up like we were we need to kill it off and keep the ball - make them tired instead of us

"Hopefully on Thursday we can improve."

Thursday is of course when England face Portugal in the quarter-finals and Scholes is certainly looking forward to the challenge.

"It’s going to be tough - they’re a good team. We only played them a few months ago in a friendly game which finished 1-1, but I think this will be a totally different story.

"They’ve got quality players of the likes of Ronaldo. He goes past people with ease, is a great crosser of the ball, a great striker of the ball and is also good in the air as he proved in the first game.

"He’s going to be a massive threat for them, but we’ve got probably the two best full-backs in the tournament. It’s going to be a great contest.

"They have quality players but we have too and hopefully we can play well on the day."

So how is life in the camp at the moment?

"Really enjoyable. We've all been together for three or four weeks and it’s like a club atmosphere now. We've all got to know each other really well.

"Team spirit’s really important and everyone’s getting on well. We look forward to every game and are confident going into every game.

"We think we can win every match and aside from the French game we’ve done that - hopefully it will continue."

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23 June 2004  
Paul Scholes' relief

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