Mario Gaspar’s incredible goal for Spain vs. England

Mario Gaspar brought an otherwise drab friendly in Alicante to life with a stunning volleyed goal to help Spain a 2-0 victory over England in worldwide friendly action.

“I am not suggesting they didn’t deserve to win the game, of course they did but hopefully we will learn from this evening”, he went on to say.

England returned from Spain on Saturday and, following the tragic events in Paris on Friday night, it was decided that the game with France would go ahead.

He said: “I think we have been a bit lucky and we have given a bit more than the England team at the moment”.

Joe Hart complains about Spain’s second goal.

“It doesn’t look good – he has severely twisted ankle, [which] normally means ligament damage, but we won’t know until X-ray or scan tomorrow”.

Spain’s quality shone through against a drab England, whose unbeaten streak of 15 matches came to an end with their first defeat since a 2-1 reverse to Uruguay at the World Cup finals in Brazil previous year. Without Carrick, we’ve still got the likes of Morgan Schneiderlin, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Ander Herrera who are all excellent midfielders in their own right, but it would take away a very important player from our side.

Despite losing, Hodgson also remains confident that his team can only improve between now and next summer, especially since he still has several big name players set to return from injury.

Spain had missed their chances to punish England and there was less of a snap about the Spanish passing in the second half although naturally there was still a lot of it. Hodgson’s team had gained confidence from holding out for so long.

“That is very positive for us heading into the European Championship”, added the 34-year-old Porto keeper.

England slumped to their first defeat in 16 games as they were comfortably beaten by Spain in Alicante. We need to dust ourselves off and perform better against France.

“We’ve done well for a long time now so it’s hard when we do lose”. But I’ve got to be realistic. We train with each other, so we know each other’s game.

Kieran Gibbs was sat on the bench here and, as he struggles just now for first-team football at Arsenal, it would be surprising if he did not study the example of Ryan Bertrand and wonder. I’ve scored three in my global career and I want to score as many as possible.

“To some extent the lack of composure we showed on one or two occasions, compared to their incredible composure, might be due to the fact that quite a few of them are a little bit new”.