On the morning of June 8th (Beijing Time), England suffered a surprising 0-1 defeat to Greece in their final pre-Euro warm-up match at home. After the game, Rice, who played the full 90 minutes, spoke to the media.
Rice reflected on the match, saying, “It hurts inside, we’ve got a lot of work to do as a team.”
“When you have that much possession and so many good chances, losing at home 0-1 before the Euros isn’t ideal. But I want to take the positives. There were some good performances to look forward to, a good tempo, and we were always trying to push forward.”
Rice emphasized the need to learn from the defeat: “Losing isn’t ideal, but we can learn from it. Undoubtedly, when we face teams, although we dominate possession, it’s about raising our intensity levels.”
“Every game is an opportunity to improve, and we’ll be well prepared for the Serbia game.”