Bridlington Town Chairman: 'England can go all the way in the World Cup'

The Three Lions are back in action tonight

Author: Karen LiuPublished 4th Dec 2022

The Chairman of Bridlington Town says England can go all the way in the World Cup.

The Three Lions take on Senegal tonight in the knockout stages of the tournament.

Pete Smurthwaite is backing them and said he is not worried about the team's history of taking it too easy against lesser teams: "I think the experiences of tournaments that we've been in in recent years has possibly taught us not to adopt that attitude. I think there's so much individual quality and talent in the England team that there's always somebody who could be a gamebreaker there.

"The two best teams I've seen are France and Spain. We've definitely got a chance of matching the competition with those two and I think there's every chance that the team would get through to the final.

"One of the people that's being talked about as possibly the next England manager is the guy Graham Potter who's now manager of Chelsea. Would you believe that around 2005 he actually applied for the Bridlington Town job as manager? But the problem was that I had already promised the job to someone else.

Pete added that he has a job for Gareth Southgate when the time is right: "Surely he'd enjoy it at sunny Bridlington and usually when managers have that really top job, the immense amount of pressure that he's under at the moment, I'm sure he'd like to come and have a relaxing game or two in the Northern Premier League Division One East. I'm sure he would. I'll be looking out for him."

Hear all the latest news from across the UK on the hour, every hour, on Greatest Hits Radio on DAB, smartspeaker, at greatesthitsradio.co.uk, and on the Rayo app.