The match with Croatia is one we’re really looking forward to.
You only have to look at Croatia’s squad to see the calibre of players that they have and we know that from the recent matches we’ve had with them.
This will be our third meeting in the space of a few months and they’ve all been played under different circumstances. The World Cup semi-final will live in our memories, both good and bad, for a long time. We then had the behind-closed-doors situation in our game last month before we return to Wembley knowing that we could end up with either the possibility of playing to go to a Nations League semi-final or to stay in League A.
I’ve enjoyed the Nations League. It has proved exciting and given us competitive matches against top nations.
Every game has provided an experience that we’ve learned from. I’ve spoken to other international managers and they’ve all said the same as the quality of the matches and the challenge on offer has been exactly what they’ve wanted.
We’re taking on a team tonight who proved in the summer that they’re one of the best in the world. They were really unfortunate in the World Cup Final after showing their character and resilience to go to extra time on three occasions before that. We really admire what they are as a team both in terms of their ability and also their mentality. It’s a great test for us.
2018 has been a year which we can look back on with pride and we’ve had different steps throughout it. The first game of the calendar year was our win in Holland last March and that was a really exciting performance which we managed to build on over the following months.
For me, the last two months have been really positive. We want that to continue today and make sure we end an exciting year for the England team really well.
We know that we have to prove ourselves every time we go on the pitch and we’ve still got to keep building.
