Callum Connolly believes England’s detailed preparation for the U20 World Cup can help the Young Lions go far in South Korea.
Paul Simpson’s side take on Guinea in their second group game of the competition on Tuesday morning, following on from Saturday’s impressive opening day win against Argentina.
And the Everton defender says that amount of work which has gone into getting the squad ready for the competition over the course of the whole campaign is starting to pay off.
“It’s been a great start, it couldn’t have been better after beating Argentina, so we’re just looking to continue and hopefully get another good result against Guinea,” Connolly told TheFA.com.
“We’ve put a lot of work into it over the last few weeks, after a long season of working towards this trip.
“We came over [to South Korea] in November and played three games here, so it was great to get over and see the environment then, how to deal with the heat and we knew what to expect from everything.
“We’ve been in camp for two weeks now and focusing on the first game, our jobs, what we can do to improve and how to exploit Argentina’s weaknesses.
“So we were well prepared for the game, and it paid off.”
That match yielded a 3-0 victory for the Young Lions, with Connolly’s Goodison Park team-mate Dominic Calvert-Lewin heading a first-half opener before goals after the break from Adam Armstrong and Dominic Solanke completed the scoring against an Argentina side who had started the game strongly.
“It was a shaky 20 minutes for us and a case of backs to the wall, but once we scored the first goal it was all us,” revealed Connolly, who has been an England regular at numerous levels over the years and spent time on loan at Wigan Athletic this season.
“They couldn’t handle us going forward and we limited them to a few chances, they hit the bar in the first half but that was the only clear chance they had and we defended well throughout the game and then took our chances.
“Guinea will possess a different threat to Argentina, but we’ll set out to get the win as usual.
“If we can take six points from the first two games, that will stand us in good stead and we’re looking to kick on from there.”
