Hart - Wilshere's age is irrelevant

Jack Wilshere (left)
12 April 2012

England goalkeeper Joe Hart believes it is time to stop mentioning Jack Wilshere's young age - just 19 - and to concentrate on lauding his quality.

Wilshere produced an impressive performance on his competitive debut for England in Saturday's 2-0 triumph over Wales in a Euro 2012 qualifier. He linked up effectively with Frank Lampard and was able to get forward to good effect with Scott Parker in the holding role.

Hart said: "I thought Scott and Jack did really well. Jack is a class player. It's time people stopped talking about him being a good player for his age. He's a good player, never mind his age. The only thing to be said about his age really is that, hopefully, it means England have got him for many years to come."

He added: "He handles everything so well and is a class player."

Hart did not have to make a meaningful save in the 90 minutes at the Millennium Stadium as goals from Lampard and Darren Bent wrapped up the points in the first 15 minutes.

He said: "It was a bit of a quiet game for me but the lads had virtually won the game in the first 20 minutes or so.

"They kind of killed whatever sort of buzz Wales were going to get from playing at home in the Millennium Stadium.

"The goals came at the ideal time and really kind of put a halt to anything they were going to do.

"I also felt that we had plenty left in the tank if we had needed to step up a gear.

"They have some good players who are very dangerous like Joe Ledley and Aaron Ramsey and Craig Bellamy. We knew they were always a threat and that's why I thought we defended really well."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in