As excitement builds in England in the run-up to the nation’s first World Cup semi-final for 28 years, midfielder Dele Alli said that the team are keeping a cool head in their tournament “bubble.”
England’s matches so far in Russia have attracted huge television audiences at home and wild celebrations, with coach Gareth Southgate and his vibrant young squad capturing the hearts of a nation.
In sharp contrast to the feverish atmosphere, Alli and his teammates are in relaxed mood in the sleepy seaside resort of Repino, 45km northwest of St Petersburg.
“You are in your own little bubble when here — training camp, coming back, getting ready for the next game. It is not until you look at social media and the Internet that you realize how big it is,” Alli said.
“Obviously we know we are playing in the World Cup, in the semi-final. We are so focused on the games that you forget what we have done so far,” he added. “It is important that we stay like that, keep going and hopefully we achieve something to make it even more special — to get to the final and win it.”
Alli on Saturday last week scored his first World Cup goal as England cruised into the last four with a 2-0 win over Sweden.
A much tougher test is expected in Moscow today against a Croatia side who swept past Argentina in the group stages and boast the midfield talents of Real Madrid’s Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic of Barcelona.
However, while many pundits and even England fans are surprised by their progress, Alli said the squad always believed they could go far.
“We had to believe and we know how talented we are as a squad,” he said. “We know we have some unbelievable players and a great manager, and everyone is clear on what we want to do.”
“When you have such a solid foundation, you have the basics and clear understanding of what we want to do and achieve, it’s not a surprise that it’s going well for us,” he added.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier