England manager Thomas Tuchel was a happy man after seeing his side extend their perfect start to World Cup qualifying with a 5-0 win in Serbia.
Harry Kane, Noni Madueke, Ezri Konsa, Marc Guehi and Marcus Rashford all found the net as the Three Lions kicked into gear in Belgrade.
England became the first side to score five goals in an away competitive match against Serbia, who suffered a home defeat in a World Cup qualifier for the first time since 2012.
Tuchel told ITV Sport: “I’m more than happy for the team and staff. We had an excellent week from start to finish. We’ve just proved what I’ve seen every day in this camp and this makes me very happy.
“We played with a lot of intensity, a lot of work in teamwork and we showed our quality. We kept Serbia to no shots on target and you have to put in a lot of work to do that, a lot of intensity and the invisible work that you do not get praise for. It is good to watch.
“Every game is different. We had a meeting in the beginning of the week. We’ve only had three weeks of training and that’s normally half a pre-season.
“It takes time and in between there are weeks of pause. The players did excellent. The credit goes to them, they did amazing – that’s the bar.”
England need five points from their final three qualifiers to reach next summer’s World Cup finals in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
‘We made them look average’
Captain Kane felt his side showed more of their true colours after another pedestrian display against Andorra at Villa Park last weekend.
He said: “We showed our level today. Even in the other games, we did well, but we didn’t reach top form.
“We scored five and made it look comfortable. We can be proud of ourselves. It has been a great camp and we are in a great position.
“We felt we had a good performance a few days ago. I know it wasn’t the performance that everyone was excited about, but we did what we had to.
“Serbia are a good team, and we made them look average tonight.”
