Coach apologises for selection gaffe
Steve Holland has apologised to the England squad for accidentally leaking Gareth Southgate’s team plans for tonight’s Group G clash against Panama.
The assistant manager was photographed during training on Friday with notes suggesting Marcus Rashford would start ahead of Raheem Sterling and that Ruben Loftus-Cheek would replace the injured Dele Alli.
Defender Kyle Walker revealed that Holland said sorry to the squad ahead of training yesterday.
“He gave his apologies and said it was the first time he had messed up in 20 years, which we had a bit of a laugh about because his refereeing skills are not great. It was a bit of banter, we move on and are looking forward to the game now.”
While Holland appeared to have given England’s team away, Walker claimed he and his teammates were yet to be told who would start against Panama.
“We don’t have a clue what the team is,” he said. “Before the Tunisia game, he did give us a couple of days’ notice that we were playing or not. But this time around, he’ll probably do it [today], so we’ll find out then.”
Southgate attempted to play down the incident as England prepare to attempt to clinch qualification to the knockout stages — but took a swipe at the media for reporting Holland’s gaffe.
“It doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” said Southgate. “There’s a squad of 23 names on the sheet, the next sheet has different players in different positions because we swap people in and people out.
“For me, no drama, but obviously any time we were to give the opposition the opportunity of having our team, it is a disadvantage to us. So our media has to decide whether they want to help the team or not. But, given that was just a squad list, it doesn’t make any difference really.”
Walker added: “You guys should just try and keep it to yourself and don’t bring it out to the world because it’s not going to help us come the later stage of the tournament — please God we get there — because all the rest of the world can see that team now, if that is the team or if not.
Southgate, despite dealing with the absence of Alli, dislocating his shoulder while out running and the team leak, is feeling positive about England’s winning start to the World Cup. He believes they performed as well as any side in the competition in their opening victory over Tunisia.
Harry Kane scored both England goals and Southgate is unconcerned by the fact the rest of his team have been struggling to hit the net. “It doesn’t really matter where the goals come from but we’d like to share them around because then it stops everybody saying we are over-reliant on Harry,” he said. “But if Harry wasn’t scoring, then we’d be saying, ‘Harry needs to start scoring’. It just alters the type of questions we get.”