Football
ESPN staff 10y

Cavani ready for battle with England

Edinson Cavani has said in The Sun that Uruguay are ready for a "fight" ahead of their Group D clash with England on Thursday after surrendering a lead to lose 3-1 to unfancied Costa Rica on Saturday.

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Cavani, who is expected to play alongside a fit-again Luis Suarez, is confident his side can bounce back from the disappointment of the World Cup opener.

"We are difficult to beat," the 27-year-old Paris Saint-Germain striker said. "We have strong character and personality and if you want to win against us you have to fight.

"We have the tools to react. We have overcome similar situations before. We have to prove we want to overcome this uncomfortable situation.

"I've played often with Luis. We have achieved wonderful things together. We are playing for a national team and all those here are great players.

"In the first match we had Diego Forlan and if Luis plays he will give his best. We have thought about why we lost since the game against Costa Rica.

"It was difficult to accept -- not because we thought they were easy, we respected them. But we were playing well and we thought we would start the competition on the right foot.

"We know we lost because we made mistakes. We have seen it, analysed it and we are convinced it was our fault."

Roy Hodgson, however, has countered Cavani's rallying cry by warning England will "use any weapon we've got" to get a result against Uruguay.

England were also beaten in their first World Cup game when they went down 2-1 against Italy.

"We saw the other night that even a top team like Italy got tested by the quality of our attacking play, so we're not going to put any of our weapons down," Hodgson said. "Any weapon we've got we're going to try to use.

"Against Italy we didn't say, 'Right, today we're going all-out attack', and we certainly won't be saying on Thursday we are going all-out defence, but it is very important at this level that you get both aspects right. That when we get the ball, we use it and we use the players we've got that can hurt the opposition.

"On the other side, we'd better make certain our defending is spot on and we get everyone in the right positions, we're compact and we push across all the things we're preaching and working on."

Hodgson, meanwhile, remains cautious of the threat posed by Suarez and his teammates. He added: "We need that in the game. Uruguay have got some good players out there.

"We want to win the game and we're only going to win it by doing all those things right and there's no point me saying to you that we will win it because we will attack because that doesn't make any sense at all, no more than me saying we can win it by just defending because that would also make no sense at all.

"In fact, that would make even less sense because the sort of players we've got are capable of hurting the opposition."

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