England on hiding to nothing
‘FARCE’: SOUTHGATE’S TEAM RAVAGED BY INJURIES AHEAD OF FRIENDLIES
Heavyweights Germany, Brazil will test weakened home side to the limit.
It was meant to be an opportunity to let England’s young lions roam free to demonstrate how they may just be equipped to inject fear into the two best teams in world football.
Instead, the build-up to the glamour friendlies against Germany and Brazil at Wembley has been accompanied in the English media by mutterings of “farce” and “embarrassment” amid the plethora of withdrawals from Gareth Southgate’s squad.
Because with so many of his key players having pulled out with injuries, there’s an argument that for Southgate the two matches – against Germany tonight and Brazil next Tuesday – have now become futile exercises.
Not that he would dare admit to any dismay. With qualification for the World Cup finals wrapped up, he had already trotted out how performances meant more than the results in these two matches.
He cut senior players while blooding youngsters he believed could help him build a passing team with enterprise and verve. “We can see what’s possible here, how can we evolve the team, how can we take it forward,” he said.
Yet the loss of at least five players who would surely have launched this brave new world in his starting XI tonight has wholly scuppered his plans to give potential “A-teamers” a taste of the quality they will face in Russia next year.
It will be far removed from the sides they ground down in an unbeaten qualifying campaign.
Southgate’s captain Harry Kane and thrusting young Tottenham Hotspur team-mate Harry Winks withdrew on Monday while Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling and Fabian Delph, both in great form, pulled out along with Liverpool’s Jordan Henderson the next day.
The squad had lost its potential talisman in Spurs’ Dele Alli while the likes of Liverpool’s Adam Lallana and Nathaniel Clyne and Arsenal’s Danny Welbeck were among a dozen potential candidates sidelined by injury.
There may be five uncapped squad members in total but as Tottenham’s Eric Dier, now the key figure in a depleted midfield, said: “We have to challenge ourselves – that’s the right mentality.”
He was asked whether there was a potential for England’s sec- ond-stringers to end up being embarrassed by both their old fierce rivals Germany and the quality of Brazil.
“I don’t really see it as a risk,” shrugged Dier. “If we get embarrassed then there is a lot more to work on. If we don’t, we are on the right path.”
The real frustration is that Southgate will only have two more friendlies, against the Netherlands in Amsterdam and Italy at Wembley in March, before naming his provisional World Cup squad. –