A host of footballers turn to the media once their playing careers have finished and maybe England defender Kieran Trippier is trying to get an early grounding in how media members conduct their work when covering an international team.
The Tottenham wing-back sat among reporters for John Stones’ pre-match press conference before he was eventually spotted by the Manchester City centre-back and asked to leave.
Trippier remained in his seat while Stones reminded him that if he really wanted to watch the press conference he could have so by watching it on television.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuElDUPOAR0
Stones, who has enjoyed a very good tournament with England in Russia, called Colombia the dirtiest team he’s played so far in his career following the Three Lions’ penalty shootout win over the Colombians on Tuesday.
“They were probably the dirtiest team I’ve ever come up against, in respect of when we won the penalty, surrounding the referee, pushing the referee,” Stones said.
“The head-butt you’ve all seen, scuffing the penalty spot, a lot of off-the-ball things you probably haven’t heard about … all the sort of things that you don’t really hear in a football match. We showed massive character to keep cool heads and not get sucked into their game.
“When you play against a team who want to fight, disturb your momentum, you can sometimes get dragged into it. We stuck to our plan, kept playing our own football.
“You can see the clips from the game. Some things I hadn’t even seen: the incident with Raheem Sterling and one of their staff … I’ve never seen a game like this before and how they behaved. I thought there could have been several red cards.
“If the referee sees the headbutt it’s a totally different game. But the best thing for us was to beat them at football. The biggest thing that’ll hurt them is going back on the plane home. We’re into the next round.”
England will now play Sweden in the quarter-final on Saturday following the Swedes round of 16 win over Switzerland on Tuesday.
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