Kieran Trippier says England are taking inspiration from cricket’s Bazball as they “attack” the Euros.
Test skipper Ben Stokes gave Gareth Southgate ’s Euro squad a pep talk last week and Harry Kane and co tapped into how he transformed the cricket team into an ultra-positive have-a-go outfit.
Toon defender Trippier reckons Stokes’ experience has been soaked up by Gareth Southgate’s squad - including going from a cautious team to one that aggressively controls games. Southgate’s side take on Bosnia Herzegovina at St James’ Park on Monday night in their first warm up game before the tournament in Germany.
Stokes changed the mood around England’s cricket team, with an emphasis on attack, and when the chips were down they stayed relaxed and unflappable.
Trippier said: “Ben had some good stories. Obviously it is the same as we want to do. We want to attack every tournament and attack every game similar to cricket.
“He has some incredible stories about the setbacks he has had. We can relate that to ourselves. Attacking it is something we want to do in this tournament as well.
“I think it’s important when we see Ben Stokes, talk about his ups and downs in his career, the challenges he’s had to face and we can relate that with the challenges that we’ve had to face as well going into tournaments.
“I’m a defender so I don’t want goals going in! But obviously with the players that we’ve got, they have the freedom to go out and express themselves. You see the attacking players that we’ve got. We want them to go out and do what they do for their clubs when they’re scoring goals, creating assists, beating a man. We’ve got that.
“We all took so much from it. It was stuff about leadership, the ups and downs and how you deal with them. We lost in the Euros final, the semi-final and obviously Qatar. It’s how we bounce back from that and Ben’s done that.
“The challenges that he faces in the pressure moments are similar to what we have to go through. He was talking about the last over, the super over, and he was saying that it doesn’t really happen so they can’t really practice for that so that was a challenge that we have to face and it’s similar to us with penalty shoot-outs, extra-time.”
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