Southgate wants his side to ‘create history’

England boss says Three Lions can make their mark on tournament

“We want more of those experiences and we want to go as far as we possibly can.”

At the outset of the competition, consensus suggested a place in the last eight would be a good effort from Southgate’s youthful squad. But the goalposts have been shifting in recent days and even the level-headed manager has shifted his sights.

He told ITV: “We’re at stage where we could go home now, get a nice reception – we’ve won a knockout game, a shoot-out – or we can go stages further and really have made a difference and created our own history.

“We said before we came we wanted to make the nation proud, a way of us behaving to do that, but we needed to win some football matches as well.”

The England boss also sounded a note of caution about Sweden, whose current Fifa ranking of 24 places them 12 behind England and eight below Colombia.

That is potentially misleading given they qualified ahead of Holland, beat Italy in a play-off and topped the group which Germany finished bottom of here in Russia.

“They’re a team I enormously,” Southgate said.

“They have a very clear identity and have had absolutely incredible results, really, against more favoured countries with bigger reputations.

“I’ve played enough matches against Sweden over the years and watched them enough in tournaments to know how strong they are.” respect