I’ve had a couple of decades to think about penalty shootouts!
EURO 96 FALL GUY GARETH IS TAKING NO CHANCES THIS TIME
Iwasn’t so comfortable with the love-in yesterday, to be honest, so it’s nice that there’s a little bit of an edge back.’
to be fair to Gareth southgate, he had been asked the previous evening if he was now the man to solve Brexit. never mind being heralded as a footballing genius for securing the narrowest of victories against tunisia and then sticking six past Panama.
But come thursday night in a small room in the bowels of the Kaliningrad stadium and England’s manager perhaps felt that the world Cup had finally arrived.
the tone of the questions had intensified and the conversation had turned, inevitably, to exactly how he has prepared for the unnerving prospect of penalties.
‘I have had a couple of decades to think it through,’ he said, referring of course to Euro 96. there was a slight rattle in his voice. Evidence that he was indeed conscious that the circumstances by which England had just finished second to Belgium in their group had put him in the firing line if his side now fail to beat Colombia in the last 16 on tuesday.
‘Of course, if we don’t win, I understand people would say whatever about tonight as well,’ he said. ‘For me that was the right thing to do and you’ve got to take decisions you believe are the right ones.’
so had he put himself under more pressure? ‘well, maybe I have, maybe I haven’t,’ he said.
‘ that is the least of my concerns. the most important thing is the playersyers are in the best physicalysical condition for the next game.’
Only in Moscow on tuesday will we know if he has made the right call in passing on the chance to meet Japan in the second round.
If fresh legs andd fresh minds lead to a performance fromom England that provesroves too good for Colombia,lombia, they would indeedeed have a wonderful opportunity to progress to the latter stages of the world Cup, the first XI having played a game fewer than many of their opponents and avoided Brazil.
southgate will, of course, insist that he was not thinking about who England might meet in the last eight. no, the strategy here was simply to arrive at the knockout stagess having essentiallye played twot games rather thant three and concluding that tthe benefit of eenjoying such a bbreak outweighed ththe pros and cons of mmeeting Colombia, sensenegal or Japan. ‘I ththink whoever we play we believe we are capable of bbeating,’ he said. ‘whoever we play are capable of, in a one-off game, beating us. But we had to make a decision we felt gave us the best opportunity of preparing the squad for that game and that’s what we tried to do. ‘It’s exciting. For me, it’s going to be a brilliant game to be involved in. they have some top players, some top attacking players in particular. But we also have some really good players who are full of belief and looking forward to this.’
Even if the strategy backfires, it is hard not to admire southgate for the singlemindedness he continues to display. He remains self-assured, mentally robust.
He said the decision to make eight changes for Belgium and leave players like Harry Kane on the bench, even when England needed an equaliser, was one he arrived at after beating tunisia.
But then from the moment southgate changed England’s formation last year it was clear he was determined to succeed or fail on his own terms and that certainly remains the case.
He stressed the importance of giving as many players as possible minutes on the pitch, and the positive effect that has on squad morale. He said: ‘ You have to be bold enough to accept that might come with questions at times.
‘But if we believe it’s the right thing to do, then we stand by it.’
On the subject of penalties, he said his players would certainly be better prepared than he was at wembley 22 years ago.
‘In ’96 I was a volunteer really,’ he said. ‘we will have a more considered list of who has been finishing in training, what the numbers should be unless they are injured.
‘If we have made changes, we keep updating the list.’
team psychologist Dr Pippa Grange has been involved in selecting that list of England’s penalty takers, with psychology tests used to identify the bestprepared players.
‘there are the players that take them regularly and have their own routine and are able to maybe change their decision depending on the goalkeeper. and there are others who don’t take them as regularly. with some we shouldn’t be interfering, but with others we are giving them a process which we believe will help them.
‘ we’ve looked at individual processes, individual techniques. then we’ve looked at collectively how we would want to approach a shootout. Making sure that there’s a calmness, that we own the process, that it’s not just decisions that are made on the spur of the moment, that it’s calm with the right people on the pitch. the right staff are on the pitch. we’ve looked at a lot of things in detail.
‘I think that’s all you can do. You keep preparing in the right way possible and try to affect the things you can.’