Sam Gallagher looked to focus on the positives drawn from the rest of England Under-19s’ Elite Round campaign after failing to qualifying for this year’s Euros.
The Saints striker was speaking on the back of a ten-minute substitute appearance where he saw his side fall to a late loss at the hands of Ukraine which sealed their passage to the European Championship while blocking the Young Lions’ path.
Despite the painful defeat, Gallagher was lifted by the overall experience and the quality of his team’s performances.
“We can take the rest of the week as a positive,” the forward stressed to saintsfc.co.uk. “We played some good stuff. The training, standard and everything was really good.
“It’s been my first tournament experience with England so it made me really concentrate on getting my rest and recovering between games, along with the way I prepare. I’ll take that from this experience.
“Now I’ll fully focus on pre-season and I know there’ll be other chances to hopefully play in England squads. Hopefully pre-season will go well and we’ll go from there.”
The highlight for Gallagher was undoubtedly his goal in a 6-0 rout of Montenegro in the first of three qualifiers but he wasn’t too disappointed not to feature much in the rest of the campaign due to a combination of injury and solid displays in his absence.
Southampton’s number-40 continued: “I’m happy to have got a goal against Montenegro but it’s just a shame we couldn’t hang on for the last two minutes or so against Ukraine. It’s just one of those goals where the luck went their way.
“I picked up a bit of a hamstring injury at the end of the Montenegro game, so I knew I wasn’t going to play in the second game. The boys played really well against Scotland so I knew it was going to be hard for me to get back into the team.
“I wasn’t expecting to start at all against Ukraine. I was just hoping to come on and make an impact. It’s a shame I couldn’t.”
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