Gareth Barry found he was part of England's Euro 2012 squad while on a golf course in Spain and is now looking forward to working under Roy Hodgson.
Midfielder looking forward to working under Hodgson
Gareth Barry found he was part of England's Euro 2012 squad while on a golf course in Spain and is now looking forward to working under Roy Hodgson.
Barry and Manchester City team-mate James Milner were playing in the Pro-Am at the Volvo World Match Play Championship in southern Spain when they received a text message from the FA telling them that had made Hodgson's 23-man squad.
"We found out about it on the course that James and I were both in the squad," Barry said.
"There's a new manager and it's nice to be in his plans to start with. You should never take too much for granted, especially with a new manager and fresh ideas so we were very happy to be included.
"I've not met the manager before. I'm looking forward to doing that and seeing his ideas and working alongside him and we will learn more in the next few weeks."
Expectations
England are big outsiders to win their first international tournament since 1966 and the squad announcement at Wembley was a relatively low-key affair.
Barry, who has 52 caps and was in Fabio Capello's 2010 World Cup squad, thinks that may work in their favour.
"The expectation levels are a lot lower than for previous tournaments, which hopefully can help the team," he said.
Four of City's title-winning side - Barry, Milner, Joe Hart and Joleon Lescott - were chosen but there was no place for Blues right-back Micah Richards.
The Lancashire club won their first Premier League title since 1968 on Sunday thanks to a dramatic injury-time winner from Sergio Aguero.
Dramatic
Winning the championship under those circumstances could be seen as fortuitous, but Barry thinks otherwise.
"If you look back over the 38 games, we played the best football," the former Aston Villa man said.
"We're slowly coming down to earth after some big celebrations. It's still not really sunk in the fashion we won the title.
"The manner we did it won't be beaten for a long time. It will go down in history as a dramatic finish and it will be tough to beat."
