Southgate rues England’s poor show against top teams
England manager Gareth Southgate admitted Tuesday’s 2-3 friendly defeat to France provided further evidence of how far his side still have to go before they can be considered contenders at next year’s World Cup.
They were unable to hold onto an early lead given to them by Harry Kane and ended up conceding defeat despite the hosts playing most of the second half with 10 men at the Stade de France.
Kane scored a brace, with the second coming from the penalty spot after Raphael Varane was sent off. In between, Samuel Umtiti and Djibril Sidibe netted for France and Ousmane Dembele got their late winner.
It was the third successive friendly match that England have failed to win under Southgate after a 2-2 draw with Spain in November and a 1-0 loss in Germany in March, but the manager insisted the gap to those sides is no bigger than what he imagined.
“If I’m honest it is absolutely what I thought. We have been competitive in all three games but we needed to play at our absolute limits to stay in all of those matches and that has shown in the end,” Southgate said.
“Those three games have provided different tests — with Spain it was their ability to keep the ball better than us and today it was slightly different, but physically the demands their players posed meant we started to tire and that led to a mistake at the third goal.”
England are on course to qualify for the finals in Russia, which begin in a year’s time, despite needing a last-gasp Kane goal to get a 2-2 draw in Scotland last weekend.
But just setting foot in France, where they suffered a humiliating exit from Euro 2016 to Iceland, reminded them of their poor record at major tournaments.