Eriksson renews call for Premiership break

Sven Goran Eriksson renewed his call for a winter break in the English season yesterday, warning that England players would otherwise continue to be "exhausted" by the time of summer tournaments.

The England coach believes his side could have won the World Cup, but he insisted that fatigue and injuries played a part in their failure to dominate the second half of games in Japan. He warned that without a winter break in the Premiership England players would continue to be "exhausted" when the tournaments start.

"We had too many players who were not 100 per-cent fit because they were coming back from injury and were tired," he said. "You could see that in the games because our problems were always in the second half. In the first half, we always played good football and scored goals but, in the second half, we always struggled.

"I think it's a problem that we have to talk about and deal with. We have to talk to club managers, the Premier League and everybody involved.

"At the moment the season is too hard and too long. If you look at Korea, they had a marvellous World Cup but they had a very long preparation and that's the difference.

"By May, the players are exhausted and then they need to begin a tournament only a couple of weeks later. They need a break to recover physically and mentally – otherwise we'll always suffer from the same problem."

Eriksson was still proud of his team as he reflected on the World Cup amid his preparations for the new season. "It was a very good experience for all of us," he said. "In particular the young players because for many of them, and indeed for me, it was the first World Cup. On the pitch, I think we did OK. Rather well, but not perfect. With the team we had, and still have, we could have done a little bit better. Our first aim was to reach the second round, then the quarter-final and so on.

"The one thing that we always said to the players was that with the team that we have, we should not be afraid of anyone and, if we are a little bit lucky, we could go all the way. I still think we could have done it.

"As for the way we went out, I think the England team can still hold its head high. We lost 2-1 after leading 1-0 against the team who won the World Cup. I don't think you can complain about that. It was a good lesson, but in the future I think we should say to ourselves that we should do even better."

Eriksson's frustration at being beaten by Brazil has only fuelled his desire to go even further at the Euro 2004 finals, but that presupposes qualifying from a group also featuring the World Cup semi-finalists Turkey.

With just one friendly – against Portugal next month – to come before the first two Euro 2004 qualifiers against Slovakia and Macedonia in October, he has few opportunities to make any major new experiments with his team or squad.

Steven Gerrard and Gary Neville should come back into contention for places after recovering from injury, while Jermain Defoe, David Dunn, and Alan Smith are on the brink of promotions to the senior squad.