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Liverpool legend Souness: England can't win anything with Alli, Lingard

Liverpool legend Graeme Souness slammed England's performance for their World Cup semifinal defeat to Croatia.

After England were eliminated, Souness laid into England's display in a damning rant and lamented a lack of ability to control the game.

Souness, speaking on BeIN Sports, said: "I want to emphasise the midfield. You can't win the big trophies, you can't dominate football matches, you can't put yourself in a position where you are not giving the ball away unless you've got good players in midfield who can keep the ball.

"I come back to Lingard and Dele Alli - two players who want to get on the end of things after there has been clever play by somebody else.

"They don't want to get involved in keeping the ball and dominating possession.

"They want to be involved in scoring the goals and getting on the end of things.

"And the make up of the team was all wrong tonight. All wrong tonight. When they come up against a decent team, I think it's inevitable that they were going to struggle tonight.

"Let me explain. They played the worst team in the tournament in Panama. They played, along with Saudi Arabia, probably the second worst team in the tournament, Tunisia.

"Put a line through the Belgium game, that doesn't count.

"Then they play Colombia and in the second half, Colombia were much better than them. England came back in extra-time but only after a Colombia player hit the crossbar.

"They get through on penalties.

"Then they play a team in Sweden who were in awe of England. Both played a similar sort of game; long ball and feed off the bits.

"Tonight is the first time, other than the Belgium game, that they have come up against a team who wants to pop it around and keep possession - and they really, really were shown up for being a back-to-front team playing very basic football."

About the author

Paul Vegas

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