Gareth’s keeping Lions real
GARETH SOUTHGATE is willing to sacrifice England’s world ranking in order to test his side against the top teams.
The Three Lions boss is not making life easy for himself by repeatedly going head-tohead with the world’s superpowers.
He has so far insisted on prestige friendlies with Spain, Germany and France.
Holland are also lined up before next summer’s World Cup, even though results in those games have been and could be to the detriment of England’s FIFA rankings.
But Southgate insisted: “The option is we pick some strategically positioned opponents and try to boost our ranking, or we test ourselves against the very best, which is what we need to do.
“How are we going to improve, how do we find out the level we are really at if we don’t?
“I’m prepared to forfeit the win percentage as a group of staff because the long-term benefits for everybody far outweighs it.
“I’d love both, but how will we ever get better?
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“We’d have a false view of where we are and we wouldn’t have to adapt to some of the challenges those big teams pose.
“You get a false sense of security and you go into a tournament without developing a way of playing that is needed against those top teams.”
It is a year since Southgate got the vote of the FA on the back of Sam Allardyce’s demise as England manager.
And asked if the period has shown him it’s a harder job than running the country, he said: “I’m not sure that is true! Funnily enough, this time last year Marcus Rashford was scoring a hattrick for us with the Under21s at Colchester and we beat Norway 6-1...”
On Monday, Rashford scored the winner in a 2-1 victory over Slovakia, a result which, coupled with the previous Friday’s 4-0 win in Malta, left the seniors on the brink of qualification for Russia 2018.