Jordan Henderson has revealed England’s players did not want to walk off in Sofia because they were determined to make the bigots suffer.
Liverpool’s captain is no stranger to seeing his team-mates racially abused on international duty following incidents against Serbia in the Under 21s in 2012 plus against Montenegro in the seniors earlier this year, but he was incensed on Monday.
When the game was halted for a second time, Henderson was involved in a furious row with Krasimir Balakov and it is understood Bulgaria manager’s told the 29-year-old: ‘What is the problem? This is normal!’
England followed the UEFA protocol and could have stayed in the dressing room after the interval but Henderson (right) says there was a unanimous desire to return to action and build a scoreline to humiliate the Bulgarians. With better fortune, the 6-0 victory could have been as much as 10-0.
‘I wasn’t happy with the situation,’ said Henderson. ‘It wasn’t nice to be involved in and it shouldn’t be happening in 2019. It is very disappointing but I felt, as a team, we dealt with it so well.
‘The decision was to carry on because if you leave the pitch and stop the game, they win. That was the message in the dressing room at half-time. We wanted to go out again and make them suffer and make their team suffer on the pitch. We did that.
‘If one player didn’t want to carry on we would have stopped playing, no problem. But everyone wanted to carry on and we wanted to let our football do the talking.’