James McAtee and Harvey Elliott ‘over the moon’ after England beat Spain in Euros quarter-final | OneFootball

England U21s stars Harvey Eliott and James McAtee hailed their team’s achievement of reaching the U21 Euros semi-finals and say they are not done yet.

In a repeat of the 2023 U21 European Championship final, England once again saw off Spain with goals from McAtee, Elliott and Elliott Anderson enough to secure a 3-1 win.

After a loss to Germany and a draw with Slovenia, captain McAtee believes that England were much improved against Spain.

“We’re over the moon but the focus is on the semi-final now,” he said. “We’re happy about the win but we need to switch focus now.

“Obviously, we got through the group, but we knew things weren’t good enough and we had to step things up. I think from the start, seeing that we started on fire, all the boys are happy with that.” he added.

“We know the Netherlands are a good team. They are in the semi-final for a reason. We’ll have a day off tomorrow and then we’ll start preparing.”

After a difficult season of limited game time at Liverpool despite his club side winning the league, midfielder Elliott is overjoyed to have contributed for his country.

““It’s incredible, I’m lost for words,” he said.

“I said at the start of the game, it’s going to be very tough. They’re going to play an incredible game against us.

“I thought the way the lads handled it, handled the pressure, conceding the goal and being determined to keep on going and keep on fighting, we deserved it so much.”

England progress to play the Netherlands in the last four and Elliott is wary of the threat that the Dutch pose his team.

He continued: “Now it’s time to celebrate, but we need to think about the semis now. Celebrate, recover, rest, go again.

“We just have to take it game by game now. We can’t be thinking too far ahead.

“The teams that we’re going to play now are incredible. They all deserve to be in the position that they’re in. We need to recover; we need to focus on the Netherlands because it’s going to be another tough game against a tough team.

“We just need to knock each opponent out the way and hopefully we can defend the title, but we need to be focused on the semi-finals now.”