As England defeated the Netherlands to approach the Euro 2024 last, they had a secret weapons up their sleeve.
Eagle-eyed visitors may include spotted an interesting moment after England scored their injury-time win against the Netherlands in Wednesday night's Euro 2024 semi-final.
As the last thirty minutes of the match passed the 90-minute tag, Three Lions manager Gareth Southgate was monitoring him as Ollie Watkins fired the ball home as the last whistle of the competition came to an end.
As you would expect, Southgate and his training staff elicited cheers, but one of the backroom team, who had just embraced the boss and immediately apologised, cut off his celebrations.
That was past French foreign Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who has played a vital role in England's run to the last- and in his own country's exit from the competition.
The original Leeds United, Chelsea and Middlesbrough scorer has been a common experience for American fans since his arrival at Elland Road in 1997, having netted 127 Premier League goals, while he also went on to maintain Burton Albion, Queens Park Rangers and Northampton Town.
Southgate moved to get his former Boro partner as a part of his England training team in March 2023 and the 52-year-old has played a major part in the group's development to Sunday night's last.
Hasselbaink won 23 global crowns for the Netherlands and was a part of their 1998 World Cup squad, where present Dutch director Ronald Koeman was working as one of Guus Hiddink's assistant instructors.
As well as being able to apply his knowledge of being part of the French camp to support England's preparations, Hasselbaink's effect on the Three Lions club has been apparent over the past month.
Watch any compilation video of Hasselbaink's best goals and it's hard not to notice just how similar Watkins ' late winner was to one of the Dutchman's trademark finishes, while the coach's fingerprints were all over England's penalty success against Switzerland in the quarter-final.
" Jimmy's got a lot of experience in the game, he knows his stuff", Phil Foden told BBC Radio 5 Live after the shootout win. " He's been taking a few of us after training to practise penalties.
" I feel like, when I first came into the England side, we were maybe practising them too much and there was n't really ]a coach ] taking them. Now we have Jimmy for that reason: to only take a couple, not overdo it.
" Practise your spot where you put it and stick with it. There's a lot of work that goes into it off the field".
Jude Bellingham, who also scored in the Swiss shootout victory, shared these thoughts.
" I was really confident in my preparation and the things I'd talked through with Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink", said the Real Madrid man. " He's stepped up for us massively and it's the work he does behind closed doors with the lads willing to take on that information that put us in those situations to be able to win".
After his brief moment of celebration at seeing his national dumped out of the competition, Hasselbaink will now be hard at work preparing for Sunday's final and the opportunity to fully savour a win.
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