England suffered a irritating conclusion to their Euro 2024 qualifying marketing campaign as they had been held to a scrappy 1-1 draw by North Macedonia in Group C on Monday.
With qualification lengthy since secured and only a draw wanted to seal a prime seeding for subsequent yr’s finals, England trailed to Enis Bardhi’s Forty first-minute follow-up after his penalty was saved.
Gareth Southgate’s group winners hogged possession however lacked fluency and invention towards dogged hosts and wanted an personal objective by Jani Atanasov to get them degree on the hour.
Jack Grealish had earlier seen a objective dominated out for offside whereas teenager Rico Lewis had a debut he is not going to overlook after being harshly penalised for North Macedonia’s penalty.
England ended the calendar yr unbeaten and topped their group with 20 factors, however Monday was simply as laboured because the 2-0 victory over Malta at Wembley on Friday.
“The really big results were in March, winning in Italy and the result against Ukraine (2-0 home win),” Southgate, whose facet thrashed North Macedonia 7-0 at Old Trafford, mentioned.
“It meant coming here tonight was a different test, given we’ve qualified and everything was achieved.”
England would have hoped to have completed with a flourish however they bought slowed down with gradual passing and the largest constructive was that they are going to be within the pot of prime seeds for the Euro 2024 draw.