England cancelling out external noise - Southgate - video Dailymotion

Gareth Southgate and Declan Rice insisted England aren't listening to external criticism

Transcript

00:00The world we live in, there's always been external noise, but external noise shouldn't affect us.

00:06What's important is the internal. We're the only ones that can perform on the pitch,

00:13we're the only ones that can work together to get those performances better,

00:17and performance is what we're focusing on.

00:20The results have basically pretty much put us in the next round already,

00:26and it's now about can we win the group.

00:29But of course we want to hit a different level to the level that we've hit so far.

00:34The lead-in to this wasn't straightforward into the prep camps, into the first two games,

00:41so there are some mitigating factors, but we're not hiding from anything,

00:46and we're not making any excuses at all. That's not the culture we have as a group.

00:51I think that's such a good thing that Gareth has with the group,

00:54is that we're all so open and so honest, and if something's not right on the football pitch,

00:58we'll review it, we'll go over it, and we'll be better for it.

01:02I was thinking back to earlier, I think I said it to the writers,

01:05that this tournament's gone very similar in a way to the previous two tournaments I've played in,

01:09where we won our first two group games at the World Cup and the Euro21.

01:15We then didn't have the best performances against Scotland and USA,

01:18but then we bounced back with a really positive performance against Wales at the World Cup

01:22and then the Czech Republic at Wembley.

01:24So tomorrow night we're really ready. We want to top the group.

01:28We want to have seven points, and it's a chance to start looking forward in a positive way.