Marcus Rashford has revealed his goal celebration was a tribute to his friend who died of cancer.
The Manchester United forward was the star of the show for England, scoring twice to see off Wales in a 3-0 victory in Qatar.
As a result, the Three Lions have earned top spot in Group B and will therefore take on Senegal in the round of 16 on Sunday.
Rashford’s inclusion in the starting line up was one of Gareth Southgate’s biggest calls on the night and, according to the striker, it was nice to get the opportunity to pay tribute to ‘a great person’.
“I lost one of my friends a couple of days ago,” Rashford explained afterwards.
“He had quite a long battle with cancer. I’m pleased I scored for him, he’s always been a big supporter of mine. He was just a great person and I’m pleased he came into my life, really.”
On the feeling of reaching the next round of the World Cup he said: “Moments like this, this is what we play football for, the biggest moments, the best moments and I’m really happy today with going through to the next round of the tournament.
“Hopefully we can now build on this tournament and I have massive ambition for this team. We can play better than we have shown tonight.
“It’s obviously good to qualify. It was a little bit disappointing for the team after the game against the USA, I thought we could have played a lot better.
“The only way to bounce back from that is to have a good performance in your next game and I thought in the first half we defended really good and they didn’t have many opportunities – I think they had one shot – and it was just about us killing the game off and taking the chances when they came.
“At half-time the manager said we were playing really well but the one thing we could work better on was having shots on target, we only had two or three in the first half.
“We wanted to work the goalkeeper more, we wanted to keep getting into dangerous positions. We didn’t finish them in the first half but thankfully we did in the second half.”
England topped Group B to seal a game against Senegal – runners-up of Group A – on Sunday.
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