England boss Gareth Southgate says his young side can be proud of display in Spain

England boss Gareth Southgate has urged his players to keep building on their recent progress, following Monday’s impressive victory over Spain.

A Raheem Sterling double and a Marcus Rashford goal put the Three Lions in command over their hosts in Seville in what was a breathtaking first-half performance.

And Southgate’s young side showed the other side of their game after the break to withstand the increasing pressure from Spain, who knew a victory would be enough to see them wrap up top spot in their Nations League table.

“I think they can be just incredibly proud of their performance,” said Southgate.

“The boys can take a lot of belief from that performance and the next challenge for us is to advance.

“We’ve come away from home and played a team on such a good run and who have been a top team for years, I’m delighted with what we’ve done but now we have to keep building on what we’ve done over the last few months.

“We’ve had some young players to have emerged who have given us some more options and right across the week, the mentality of the players has been outstanding and they should enjoy tonight.”

It was the performance of England’s front three of Harry Kane, Sterling and Rashford which really caught the eye though, as they inflicted Spain’s first competitive home defeat in 15 years.

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Sterling celebrates his first goal with Harry Kane and Ross Barkley

And Southgate says he always knew they would be able to cause problems for Luis Enrique’s side.

“We spoke to the forward players in particular before the game to remind them what a threat they are and the three of them were outstanding and caused all sorts of problems all night,” he admitted.

“They were a tremendous threat and it was down to the rest of the team to play and provide and I thought at times we did that really well.

“You have to accept that, at times, we will concede possession in certain areas and we’re encouraging people to take risks but for a very young team, I thought they put in an incredible performance.

“We withstood pressure reasonably well and they should all be proud of what they’ve done.

“There were moments where we showed some real composure on the ball, from the goalkeeper right the way through the team.

“It wasn’t a case of sitting back and soaking up pressure and hitting on the counter attack as I thought we used the ball really well.

“Of course, in the last 20 minutes, we had to face some pressure but you expect that to happen and we were pretty resilient.”

Southgate and his squad will return home on Tuesday, before they meet up again next month for a Wembley double-header with USA on Thursday 15 November and Croatia on Sunday 18 November. Tickets are on sale now for both games.