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Tuesday 09 June 1998

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HODDLE IN POSITIVE MOOD AS ENGLAND SET OFF FOR FRANCE

ENGLAND head for France today with coach Glenn Hoddle insisting: We can win the World Cup. The coach leads his 22-man squad across the channel firmly believing that he has assembled a group of players good enough to emulate Sir Alf Ramsey's boys of 1966. He is sure that this is the best prepared England party ever and was in positive mood as he spelled out his intentions for the next month.

He said: It's going to be tight, probably the tightest World Cup ever, and I don't think anybody can expect to just go there, turn up and win the World Cup. But I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't feel we could do it, and I think the players believe we can as well. I've gone on record as saying there is only one thing on my mind. Nobody can say they're definitely going to win the World Cup, not even the Brazilians.

All I can say is that the things we've been doing have been about getting the players right to go and perform for seven games, and that means going all the way. You can't go into it any other way. We're totally focused on doing that. I'm sure that there are eight, nine, maybe ten countries with that on their mind, but we're one of them and our approach is right. We're not being arrogant, not blowing our own trumpet. If anybody looks at how we qualified that's a reason to be positive.''

Hoddle will be hoping his upbeat attitude rubs off on the players in the same way that Terry Venables' personality did at Euro 96. The current coach believes he has even more up his sleeve than his predecessor had two years ago, and certainly if the likes of David Seaman, Tony Adams and skipper Alan Shearer can reproduce their form of that glorious summer, then England could go one better than the last four spot they achieved then.

''We've got quality players with a mixture of youth and experience and after qualifying from such a tough group there's no reason to think anything other than that we can do well,'' the England boss continued. There was the experience of playing in the Tournoi last year as well, learning a lot of things on and off the pitch that we're going to be needing now, and winning out against Brazil, France and Italy. They're big countries, with big players. It's not going to be the same as this, but it was a barometer of what we can do. Yes, we've got a lack of players with World Cup experience, but the positives outweigh the negatives.''

And he insisted: We shouldn't be going there with any fear. We'll have plenty of respect for our opponents and for the new rules, but no fear. If you've got any fear in your camp, you're on a downward spiral. But we're nice and positive. We've got a lot of players with talent and if we can reproduce some of the stuff we've done on the training ground, we'll have a hell of a side.

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