England vs Wales: Gareth Bale expects a 'feisty' Euro 2016 derby clash in Lens

Feisty: Gareth Bale is looking forward to the atmosphere between England and Wales
NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP/Getty Images
Vaishali Bhardwaj12 June 2016

Gareth Bale expects the Euro 2016 clash between England and Wales to be a "feisty" affair as both sides look to secure a win in Lens next week.

Chris Coleman's side lead Group B with three points after one match played thanks to Wales' 2-1 win over Slovakia on Saturday, which was the nation's first game in a major tournament for 58 years.

In contrast, Roy Hodgson's England side had to settle for a 1-1 draw against Russia in Marseille later the same evening after the Three Lions conceded in added time despite looking set to secure a win with Eric Dier's superb 73rd-minute free kick.

England now meet Wales on Thursday afternoon, and Bale - who opened the scoring against Slovakia - believes the match will be keenly contested and played out in a derby-like atmosphere.

"We understand it's going to be a derby, it's going to be feisty, but we're going to prepare well now. We'll concentrate on ourselves, on nobody else," the Real Madrid star said.

"For us we are just going to concentrate on the next game, we want to win the game and we want to play well and do everything we did today. We'll be preparing now over the next four days, and regardless of who it's against we'll just try to win it."

He added: "On a personal note it's great to get the goals but as I've said before it really doesn't matter who gets the goals.

"We just want the points, we want the wins, we want to go as far as we can in this tournament. We're all together, we all work for each other hard. As I've said many a time, it's about the team, not about individuals.

Euro 2016 in pictures: Day Two

1/30

"For us there was only one game and that was the Slovakia game, we weren't concentrating on anything else and we've worked hard as a team. We couldn't give anything more and we just gave everything for each other and that's why we got the result."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in