Steve Cooper has paid tribute to his England Under-17s squad after they collected a tenth successive victory in the European Championship.
The Young Lions beat Republic of Ireland by a single goal to secure a Euro semi-final spot as well as seal their qualification for the U17 World Cup in India later this year.
And after a perfect qualification record over six games this campaign before three group stage victories at the Finals in Croatia, Jadon Sancho’s first-half strike on Saturday proved to be the winner against a rigid Irish line-up to make it a perfect ten.
"We completely dominated the game from start to finish and were the only team who was going to win the game,” said Cooper.
"Jadon scored a great goal in the first half to put us 1-0 up and we managed to continue to play our football and try to score more goals.
"We could’ve scored more, but that's fine as we've won the game and we're just really happy that we’ve qualified for the World Cup and the semi-finals of the European Championships.
“And we've won ten straight games, which is a massive achievement at any level so to do it at international level, I have to give the boys credit.
"I said to the players and the staff that when we started out last summer, we all said one of the targets was to qualify for the World Cup, so to play ten games and get ten straight wins to do that, it's just great credit and they deserve the recognition.”
England will now take on Turkey in Tuesday’s semi-final, with focus turning to reaching Friday’s final and the prospect of lifting the U17 Euro title for a third time in seven years.
And Cooper says his squad will be ready for the challenge.
"It's the semi-final of the European Championship so there's going to be no easy game whoever you come up against whether it's a defensive team or an attacking team,” he added.
"We know bits about Turkey, but the focus will be on ourselves as it has been all season.
"The approach will be exactly the same and we'll be ready.”
The semi-final with Turkey will kick-off at 4.45pm on Tuesday 16 May, and will be shown live on EuroSport.
