Declan Rice claims England are continuing to prove their doubters wrong after the Three Lions booked their spot in the quarter-finals of Euro 2020.
Gareth Southgate’s side scored just two goals during three tepid group-stage games but overcame one of football’s behemoths by defeating Germany.
Raheem Sterling opened the scoring in the 75th minute before Harry Kane doubled the lead 11 minutes later to guide England to a 2-0 victory at Wembley.
Rice says the criticism he and his teammates received ahead of the fixture only spurred them on to prove their critics wrong on the big stage.
“It’s incredible. A lot of people, you look at the group stage games, they’ve written us off,” Rice told BBC Sport.
“Complaints about the performances, not scoring enough goals. You read a load of things but as players you put that to the back of your mind and you want to prove people wrong.
“I think today, everyone had that fire in their belly to go out there and one, knock Germany out of the tournament and two, for us, progress to the next round.”
Rice added: “We don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves because Saturday’s a massive game as well now. We travel to Rome and we want to win that and progress into the semi-finals.
“All I can say is about today, the occasion, fans, players, how we were up for it in the changing room. I’ve not been a part of a team with togetherness like this.”
