Gareth Southgate claims Ravel Morrison’s training ground stunner wasn’t even the best goal scored in England Under-21s training at St. George’s Park this week.
The Three Lions boss saw West Ham midfielder Morrison strike home a unique back-heel volley in Sunday’s session - before the video clip became an internet smash within a matter of hours.
And Southgate wants to see his players to continue showing creativity and freedom in both training and match situations, as England prepare to face San Marino on Tuesday.
“Considering it was the third best goal in that session, it was a decent finish really,” joked Southgate.
“The level of quality in our training is so impressive from all of the players and I suppose that was different to anything that we’ve seen, but we do see incredible goals and bits of skill every day.
“But when you slow that one down and see what he actually does, even for us, it raises eye-brows.
“We do have several players who naturally can do creative things and that’s an example of a creative thinker at work.
Watch Ravel Morrison's stunning volley from training.
“We have other players who would finish that just as clinically, but you only get one goal for it and they do it in a different way.
“It’s nice to see the balance of those players and characteristics within the squad.”
England will need to show their creativity on Tuesday too, as they are likely to come up against a packed defence when San Marino visit a sold-out Greenhous Meadow in Shrewsbury.
The Three Lions know they can extend their lead at the top of their Euro qualifying group with a win and Southgate wants to see his players expressing themselves on the pitch.
But that is only if it brings the right outcome as Southgate felt his side were over-elaborate at times during last week’s win over Finland in Milton Keynes
“We want players to play with freedom, there’s no question about that,” he explained.
“I think we’ve got players from 1 to 11 that can use the ball, keep possession, play creative passes and open up defences in different ways.
“So you want that to be transferred from the training pitch onto the match pitch, because we see it every day in training.
“They key is to make sure we are effective and I found on Thursday night that we did some eye-catching things but we didn’t really create many chances in the game.
“Given the quality of players that we’ve got and even though the opposition defended in numbers, we can set our standards a bit higher.”
