England Under-21 1 Greece Under-21 2: Keepmoat defeat leaves England sweating on their Euro final place

England's hopes of qualifying for next summer's Under-21 European Championship suffered a major blow last night with defeat against Greece in Doncaster.

Victory for Stuart Pearce's side at the Keepmoat Stadium would have taken them above their opponents to the top of Group Nine and within three points of qualifying for the play-offs.

But they did not manage a meaningful effort on goal until the 35th minute, by which time they were behind to Kyriakos Papadopoulos's opener.

A defensive blunder allowed Ioannis Papadopoulos to pinch a second and a debut goal from Nathan Delfouneso 11 minutes from time came too late to prevent Pearce falling to a first home competitive defeat in three years while running the under-21s.

England must now beat Portugal and Lithuania in their remaining qualifying matches and hope Greece lose to Macedonia to be sure of reaching the play-offs ahead of the finals in Denmark.

Pearce said: "We weren't at the races tonight, we were poor. We didn't play to a standard that's acceptable to us.

"We tried to go from back to front too much, we didn't play enough through the midfield and we gave possession away too lightly.

"I've got to give credit to the Greeks, I thought they played very well and certainly deserved their victory. We have to learn the lesson from it.

"Rarely have this team let me down.

"I'm disappointed with it and, more importantly, the players are as well."

Despite the disappointment, the former Manchester City manager is confident six points will be enough.

"We've got to win the last two matches now, which will be difficult," he continued.

"We know what we've got to do.

"Seventeen points gets you through as runner-up, that's been historically the case. It's either win both games or that's our lot.

"We know what's in front of us. We've had a good run in the competition.

"We can and we will play a lot better than that."