England boss Fabio Capello has thanked Slaven Bilic for motivating his team ahead of the World Cup clash with Croatia.
Bilic has stirred up the clash at Wembley by suggesting England have lost their "Englishness" under Capello.
Capello is not worried about the comments and feels Bilic has done his own team-talk for him as he will not have to motivate his players to beat Croatia after Bilic's outburst.
Capello's men can qualify for South Africa with victory against the side that denied them a place at Euro 2008 - but there is the added incentive of proving Bilic wrong after he stirred up the mind games this week.
"Thank you Mr Bilic," Capello said. "It is the best. I have no need to motivate my players after this. It's fantastic assistance.
"He prepared the game. He tried to provoke a reaction. For me, thank you. That's fantastic assistance."
"I like the English spirit. I saw this spirit in a lot of games that we've played.
"It is impossible to win without spirit. We suffered sometimes during first halves and played better second halves, and it would have been impossible to do that without spirit."
Dream
Victory for England against Croatia will secure England's place in South Africa next summer and for Capello it will be a realisation of a dream.
"It was always my dream to be here. I always said that," added Capello.
"I think it's the dream of every manager (to reach the final of the World Cup). Now, my dream is first to go to South Africa. This is the dream. Afterwards, there'll be another dream.
"The goal when I took over England was to get to the finals. When I came here, people said that - with Croatia - it would be a very difficult group psychologically, so I wanted to give the players belief."
http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11095_5545440,00.htmlQuality way to respond. Hope we give 'em a good beating tonight.