The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Rising hopes will be issue for England – Southgate
Three Lions handed kind draw – and big expectations – for Russia 2018
Gareth Southgate accepts that England will expect his side to progress thanks to an undeniably favourable draw for Russia 2018 but will be taking nothing for granted after recent disappointments.
Speaking after yesterday’s slick ceremony at the Kremlin, the England manager admitted he was relieved to have avoided the likes of Brazil but said his team will face a “fascinating” challenge against Group G rivals Tunisia, Panama and top seeds Belgium.
“There’s one team we know so much about in Belgium – one of the best teams in the world – and two teams we, at the moment, know a lot less about,” the 47-year-old said.
“Panama, we’ve never played, and Tunisia have qualified through the African group, which is strong, so they’re to be respected.
“We’re the second-ranked team in that group so it’s understandable how people will pitch it but, equally, in the last two tournaments we went out to teams we thought we’d beat.
“At the last World Cup, Costa Rica went through instead of us and Italy, and then, in the last Europeans, we know what happened with Iceland (at Euro 2016).
“So we’ve got to be mentally prepared in those games, not in terms of underestimating them, because I don’t think we do that with anybody, but we’ll have to handle being the favourites and that’s one of the challenges of being an England player.”
With Belgium able to call upon Premier League stars such as Chelsea’s Eden Hazard, Manchester City’s Kevin de Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku at Manchester United, they are currently ranked fifth in the world, 10 places higher than England.
Southgate said the teams’ club connections would no doubt lead to considerable training-ground banter.
But the links between the teams extend to the dugouts as Belgium are managed by former Swansea, Wigan and Everton boss Roberto Martinez, a man Southgate is used to seeing at games and with whom he once shared a TV studio at the 2012 European Championships.
The England boss also did his coaching badges with Belgium’s assistant coach Graeme Jones, the former Doncaster and Wigan striker who has been Martinez’s right-hand man for the last decade.
Martinez, who also looked pretty happy with his fixtures, told reporters Southgate is “a gentleman I admire and I wish him the best of luck, apart from the game in the World Cup”.
That game, the pair’s last in the group, is in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, and takes place on June 28.
England’s opener is against Tunisia, ranked 27th, in Volgograd on June 18, with the game against 56th-ranked Panama in Nizhny Novgorod on June 24.
Elsewhere in the draw, hosts Russia were given about as good a chance of advancing as they could have hoped for – in a group with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Uruguay while Iberian neighbours Portugal and Spain were joined in Group B by Morocco and Iran.
France, Australia, Peru and Denmark make up Group C, with Group D perhaps the closest to a ‘Group of Death’ as it contains Argentina, Iceland, Croatia and Nigeria.
Brazil, Switzerland, Costa Rica and Serbia were drawn in Group E, with defending champions Germany in Group F with Mexico, Sweden and Korea.
Poland, Senegal, Colombia and Japan make up Group H, which is where England’s potential round-of-16 opponent would come from.