Southgate unhappy with team reporting

THE mood inside the England camp remained largely positive yesterday. Gareth Southgate was buoyant enough to declare his team as good as any at this World Cup in the build-up to tomorrow’s match with Panama. He just wasn’t entirely happy that everyone seemed to know what it was. Until Kyle Walker said that Steve Holland had apologised to the players for revealing his training notes to a phalanx of lenses on Thursday, nobody was sure. But the manner in which England’s manager turned his sights on the media, suggesting journalists had in some way been unpatriotic for reporting what was scribbled on his assistant’s pad, suggested it must have been the line-up he claimed not to have even told his players is his plan for the game in Nizhny Novgorod. If Marcus Rashford has indeed earned selection ahead of Raheem Sterling and Ruben LoftusCheek starts ahead of the injured Dele Alli, there should be cause for excitement among England supporters. It is a side that should comfortably beat a country most famous for hats. Not until FIFA print off the team sheets an hour before kickoff does anyone outside the England squad ever know if the line-ups published in the newspapers are correct. Often they are, but one recalls a game under Roy Hodgson when nine of the names were in fact wrong. Some managers mix things up even on the eve of a match. Sven-Goran Eriksson often trained in formation and on one occasion the session took place in full view of reporters. The following night, however, the deployment of both Ashley Cole and Wayne Bridge on England’s left flank came as a surprise. Eriksson never seemed to mind when the correct line-up was published, and nor did Fabio Capello. Members of his staff would often try to offer some guidance to reporters keen to write previews that offered some accurate insight ahead of the game. The Italian regarded it as good for media relations and nothing that would undermine his attempts to win matches. Not everyone has been like that, of course. Hodgson would complain and his assistant, Gary Neville, suggested any desire to reveal the team was ‘driven by a journalist’s ego’. Sam Allardyce was happy to tell the football writers his team on the eve of a game when he became England manager. It did not, of course, provide him with immunity from the newspaper sting that cost him his job. But Allardyce is far from unique in being so relaxed about his team. Luiz Felipe Scolari would allow the media to attend every Brazil training session in Japan in 2002, so everyone knew he intended to select Kleberson ahead of Juninho for the quarter-final against England. They still won the game and went on to lift the World Cup with the same open approach.