KYLE WALKING A TIGHTROPE
Boss Southgate not impressed by lack of discipline
KYLE WALKER bore the haunted appearance of a player who fears his goose is cooked as an international footballer after his red card in Reykjavik.
He has grounds. Gareth Southgate holds steel girder self- discipline high on his list of non- negotiables for England.
Red mist, red card, red face has been the depressing blowout sequence too often in the biggest games in the past and Southgate wants no repeat on his watch. The England manager was a second- half substitute against Argentina at the 1998 World
Cup when David Beckham was dismissed and the side went out at the last- 16 stage on penalties.
Eight years later, England suffered the same fate in the quarter- finals after Wayne Rooney was sent off against Portugal.
England may have crawled out of the hole Walker’s second- half lunge put them in against Iceland but at the Euros next summer and the Qatar World Cup the year after, Southgate knows there is unlikely to be the same wriggle room. “We all have to learn from that moment in the game because we’ve gone out of tournaments before with 10 men,” said Southgate.
“That’s not a situation that we’ve had in the four years I’ve been in charge, so the response to it from the rest of the team was good but it put us in a really difficult situation and we lose him now for the game on Tuesday as well.
“Kyle knows he’s made an error tonight but I am not going to rule him out in the long term on that one moment.” If that message represented a crumb of comfort to Walker after becoming the 14th player to be sent off for England, then he may be less heartened by Southgate’s past actions as an international manager.
Derby’s Andre Wisdom was shown a red card in Southgate’s second game in charge of the Under- 21s against Finland in 2013. He was never picked again. “I think players I’ve left out previously from any squad won’t have been because of just one situation but we were very conscious with the Under- 21s to talk to the team about discipline because we’ve learned what had happened with the seniors in the past,” said Southgate. “The same applies to this game.
“It makes the game so difficult, when you’re in the ascendancy, it shifts the momentum and it could have cost us the game on the night. We got away with it but we have to hammer those points home because it’s critical.”
The figures support Southgate. Iceland was the 16th occasion on which England had suffered a sending off – Beckham and Rooney were both given their marching orders twice – and only the second time England’s 10 men came up with a win. He cannot afford to be carrying pinless hand grenades in his squad.
Walker is not a serial offender. He has been dismissed only once in his club career. He admitted: “I’m a seasoned professional and I should know how to manage a game if I’m on a yellow card. I put myself in a situation that I shouldn’t have been in.”