Harry Maguire has admitted England’s poor defensive performance against the Czech Republic could have been down to the players bringing their poor club form onto the international stage.
England lost their first European Championship qualifier in 10 years as they went down 2-1 in Prague on Friday night, despite having taken an early lead through a Harry Kane penalty.
Three members of the back four that started for England, Maguire, Danny Rose and Michael Keane, are playing for struggling Premier League teams in Manchester United, Tottenham and Everton respectively.
And when asked if there was a lack of confidence in the England defence, Maguire responded: “Yes, maybe.
“We bring our club football into international level. It was a difficult game. Don’t get me wrong, we started sloppy. We took the lead in the game but we didn’t deserve to.
“The second half we controlled the game a lot more than the first half but we gave them a sloppy goal to win the game. We do need to improve on that.
“Obviously you are wanting to develop partnerships. Sometimes in international level you can’t really do that.
“You have players who aren’t playing for their clubs so they don’t get selected, and you have players that pick up injuries.
“You’ve got to adapt. That’s one of the tricky parts of playing international football, every camp you’re normally playing alongside different players - you don’t want to be - and need to develop new partnerships.
“But listen, there’s no excuses. We need to be better than Friday night. We need to be better going forward. We need to be better on the ball. And we certainly need to be better at keeping the ball out of the net.”
