The Hindu : Sport / Football : Trust me, says Eriksson

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Wednesday, Jun 28, 2006

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Sport - Football

Trust me, says Eriksson

The Swede focuses only on his team's positives

BADEN-BADEN: ``Trust me. You have to — you don't have any choice,'' England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson said after his team advanced to the quarterfinals of the World Cup with a scrappy 1-0 win over Ecuador.

Eriksson only wanted to focus his team's positives.

``I don't remember any team who started the World Cup in a perfect way and won all seven games and did it with style every time,'' Eriksson said. ``And I think you have to suffer in a tournament like this. ``Look at Argentina against Mexico on Saturday. They couldn't resolve the situation in 90 minutes against Mexico.''

Formation not yet decided

Eriksson tried a 4-5-1 formation against Ecuador with Wayne Rooney as the sole striker. He might recall Peter Crouch to partner Rooney and convert back to 4-4-2 for Saturday's quarterfinal match against Portugal. Or not.

``If you remember, we tried it in the past some times, even recently, because I always said that at some point in the tournament I thought it would be the right way to play,'' Eriksson said. ``We will decide during the week if we should stick to it or go back to 4-4-2.''

While the five-man midfield was supposed to give Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard more opportunities to go forward, England scored off David Beckham's free kick.

Keeping faith on Lampard

``They have more freedom to come and they could both have scored against Ecuador,'' Eriksson said. ``Frank could have scored certainly. I'm not concerned. He creates a lot of occasions and hopefully from the quarterfinals onwards he will put them in the net.''

Beckham vomited because of dehydration just after he scored. He didn't say he was feeling ill before the game, but Eriksson wasn't surprised.

``Probably because he wanted to play,'' Eriksson said. ``It's not a concern that he didn't say anything to me before the game.

``If he had been injured and couldn't run fully then it's something he should be telling me. I think it was a stomach bug — maybe he was drinking too much water.'' — AP

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