Gareth Southgate has joked that Ivan Toney has ‘just about forgiven him’ after leaving it so late to bring him on against Slovakia.
England were trailing 1-0 in the Euro 2024 last-16 tie, but Southgate was reluctant to make changes until very late on.
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Despite being behind from the 25-minute mark, Toney came on four minutes into the six allocated minutes of injury time – despite Southgate having made just two of his five subs at that point – meaning the striker had limited time to change the game.
But the 28-year-old’s presence helped England back into the game when Jude Belllingham struck an overhead kick in the dying seconds of the game, before Toney headed across goal for Harry Kane to put England 2-1 up in extra-time after a frenetic few minutes.
Toney clearly felt that he had a point to prove after his introduction, something that Southgate revealed after the striker’s less-than impressed response to coming on so late.
Speaking exclusively to talkSPORT, Southgate said: “I could just tell from his face what he was thinking and I could understand it.
“I’m putting him on with a minute to go – any player is going to think ‘I’ve been sat for the tournament and you’ve not used me’ but what I said to him was that ‘I know this isn’t a good time and I know it’s not how you’d like it, but there could be one moment’.
“I think that his presence will have unsettled them a bit and he had a very clever bit of play for the second goal as well.
“I think he’s just about forgiven me now!”
In his press conference, Southgate joked that Toney was ‘disgusted’ with him.
The Brentford striker then spoke to talkSPORT and described the final moments of the game as ‘very stressful’.
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Toney told talkSPORT: “It’s obviously going to be annoying not playing, but you have to be ready and everyone’s going to be needed throughout this tournament.
“I played my part today and hopefully we can continue that.”
When asked if they thought they were out as time ticked down, Toney said: “No, not really, because I feel like we had plenty of the ball.
“We had bodies going forward and crosses coming into the box towards the end.
“When he brought me on, he was just saying, stay in the box and try and do what you can do. Jude managed to get us back in the game and from there I felt like we had the momentum to kick on and get the goal.”
Attention now turns to Saturday’s quarter-final clash with Switzerland, a match that will be live on talkSPORT.
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