Soccer: Confident Eriksson says England will get better

Coach Sven-Goran Eriksson dismissed criticism of England's lacklustre 1-0 win over Ecuador today and insisted everything would be fine in the World Cup soccer quarterfinals.

England, who will face either the Netherlands or Portugal next Sunday (NZ time), struggled yet again at these finals to get any rhythm or fluency to their game and had only a superb David Beckham free kick to thank for their win.

Spurning any idea he should be worried by England's misfiring display, Eriksson told a news conference: "I'd be very concerned if we'd lost two or three games so far and were out of the World Cup.

"I'm not concerned. I think everything will be okay.

"Once again, we're in the quarterfinals, among the best eight teams in the world with Germany and Argentina ... I'm rather proud to be together with those teams."

Looking back to England's quarterfinal exit at the hands of Brazil in 2002, he added: "I think we will do better this time than we did four years ago.

"We all know we can play better football, but in the four games we've played we've shown that we're getting better and better. The best will come, I'm quite sure about it."

Eriksson even made a virtue of the fact that, despite today's display and their laboured performances in group B, England have still made it through to the last eight.

"I think it's very good knowing you can play better and you're already qualified for the quarterfinals. That's good for the future ... I'm confident.

"We should have scored more goals -- if we'd scored a second the game would have been even better for us. But we will do that next Saturday."

- REUTERS