England CP star Michael Barker writes about their World Championship chances, Argentine steak and San Luis talent

Thursday 14 Sep 2017

It’s been a great start to the tournament for us and the best thing about it is that we haven’t conceded any goals yet.

Obviously scoring as many goals as we have, an 11-0 win over Japan and 9-0 against Venezuela, has been a great confidence booster and I’ve been to a few tournaments over the years, but the way this group compares to the others, I’d say we’re seen as the favourites by many. I’ve never known us to be in that position before so it’s nice and it feels good.

We believe we have a real chance of going far and potentially winning it. We’ve had the best start that we could’ve made but we still haven’t hit our top gear yet, so we’re just looking forward to each game as it comes, hoping we can hit our level as we go and get as far as we can.

Next up is the Netherlands on Friday and we’re excited to see where we stand against them, as we’ve always come up a little bit short against the Dutch in previous meetings. But we’re looking forward to testing ourselves against them now with the new players and scoring ability we have in our squad these days.

On paper, they will be tougher opposition to Japan and Venezuela but we’re not taking anything lightly and we just want to get the win and make sure we top the group.

The games will get tougher and tougher from here as we’ve already qualified for the quarter final, where it looks like we’ll be playing the USA or Ukraine. The Americans look really strong this year and we know how good Ukraine can be from playing them down the years.

So either of those opponents will be a huge test for us and there won’t be any 9-0 or 10-0 scorelines from here, it’ll be a lot closer than that. We’ll be ready for them though, we just want to get through the next game so we can plan for whoever we’re facing.

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Aside from the football, we’re all really enjoying our time in Argentina. I’d been to Brazil previously, so this is my second time in South America and it’s a lovely place where we’re staying.

The mountain backdrop in San Luis is beautiful and the weather is good too, as it’s sunny with clear skies but not too hot and that makes it perfect for football.

Argentina is famous for its steak and it’s coming each day at the hotel, so we’re enjoying that too. I don’t think we could ever get bored of steak!

We also had the chance to visit a local school in San Luis, which was an amazing experience because we’ve never done anything like that before. I can see it being a big part of future tournaments and we’re already looking forward to doing something like that again, as it had that much of an impact on the lads. It was a humbling experience for all of us.

The CP team haven't just scored 20 goals in 2 games - they've also been making friends over in Argentina, including this lad 😢 pic.twitter.com/wnY21qihM5
— England (@England) September 13, 2017

It was interesting to see how the school differed from those in England, and to be honest, it was quite nice. But the cultural difference was massive in terms of the way they played football, as there was no field or grass and they played on what was like a basketball court with smaller goals.

There were a couple of good players there too. One young lad called Luciano was picked out as the player of the day and that was amazing. He was really good and when he got picked out at the end, you could see how much it meant to him as he burst out crying. It just warmed everyone’s hearts and who knows, he could be a Messi of the future so watch this space!

By Nicholas Veevers Content Manager - FA Owned Channels

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