England goalkeeper Joe Hart unhappy with venue for Spain defeat

13 November 2015 23:46

Joe Hart lashed out at the decision to play England's 2-0 defeat to Spain at the home of third-tier club Hercules.

England's 15-match unbeaten run came to an end in Alicante as Spain comfortably beat Hodgson's team thanks to goals from Mario Gaspar and Santi Cazorla.

Gaspar put the European champions ahead with a stunning acrobatic volley and Cazorla took advantage of some slack defending by curling in the winner eight minutes from time.

Hart had no complaints about the result - Spain were good value for the win - but he was deeply unhappy that such a prestige fixture took place at the Estadio Jose Rico Perez, the home of Segunda Division B side Hercules.

''It's strange how we've ended up playing on a Third Division pitch for a game like England v Spain," said Hart, who captained the team in Wayne Rooney's absence.

"It wasn't good enough, I'm not making excuses."

Hart admitted he was deeply unhappy at seeing England's unbeaten run, which had stretched back to the World Cup, come to an end.

"I'm upset," the England goalkeeper said.

"We've done well for a long time now so it's difficult when we do lose.

''We had some chances, we were in the game. We need to dust ourselves off and perform better against France (on Tuesday).

''We did break through Spain and we did that on enough occasions but after that we let ourselves down a little bit.''

Roy Hodgson lamented England's poor ball retention on the Costa Blanca.

Fabian Delph was guilty of giving the ball away on several occasions and Raheem Sterling surrendered the ball in the build up to Mario's stunning scissors kick.

"We always knew it would be a tough ask to defend against Spain," the England manager said.

"We knew how good they are at keeping the ball and moving it around and we knew we would have to work hard to keep them at bay.

"Strangely the (first) goal we conceded was a Spanish counter-attack when we had good possession.

"By giving the ball away we gave them the opportunity to counter-attack against us and score a spectacular goal.

"We have to learn our lesson from it and remember when we play teams of this quality you can't afford to make any mistakes because you're going to get punished.

"We didn't pass the ball as well as we would have liked.

"We think we can do better in possession and we've got players who can be more dangerous in attacking situations."

Twelve minutes after Mario volleyed Spain ahead, Cazorla wrapped up the win for the hosts with a curling shot that went in off a post.

Spain coach Vicente Del Bosque felt England played reasonably well.

He said: "I think we have been a bit lucky and we have given a bit more than the England team at the moment.

"This is a good win for Spain. We could say this was a prestige result against an England team who were very strong and very threatening every time they crossed over the line into our half of the pitch.

"We defended well and were strong against a team who were, once again, were very strong and very threatening."

Source: PA