The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Let’s keep on improving, Southgate tells players
Three Lions boss wants to make country proud after reaching Nations League Finals
Gareth Southgate wants England to keep pushing, improving and making the nation proud as they look to continue their ascent in 2019.
Even the most optimistic fan would have struggled to have predicted this year’s successes, having made the final four at the World Cup in Russia before reaching the inaugural Nations League Finals.
England secured next summer’s shot at silverware by coming from behind to exact revenge against semi-final foes Croatia on Sunday, when Jesse Lingard and Harry Kane netted in a late 2-1 win.
It complemented last month’s 3-2 victory in Spain and provided the perfect ending to a year that even surpassed Southgate’s expectations.
“I think that they should be very proud of what they’ve done,” the England manager said of his post-match message to his squad.
“The quality of their play, the resilience they’re showing, the way they’re coming together as a group, the strength of them as a group. That’s been really pleasing.
“We almost take for granted now some of the football they’re playing out from the back in the first half, which was really of the highest quality under pressure.
“So, there are steps they are taking which are kind of accepted now and the next stages were to win in these big matches and over the last two months we’ve really been able to do that.
“What we can’t do is, again, it’s the same challenge we had after that summer – we’ve had now more consistency, but we have got to keep pushing and improving, and not sit back.
“We’ve beaten three of the top 10 in the last couple of months, but there are still more targets ahead.
“Important qualifiers in March, we can’t take those for granted and a really exciting challenge for next summer now.”
The challenges that lie await in Euro 2020 qualification and next summer’s Nations League Finals in Portugal will become clear in early December.
But the fact they have gone from 16th to fifth in the world rankings this year will give them confidence, while topping Group A4 ahead of Spain and World Cup finalist Croatia is another “significant step”.
He said: “Slowly we are starting to beat those top teams now. We’ve had an unprecedented run of fixtures, which has been tough but, actually, we’ve learned so much from it. Because you have to be near on perfect in those game against the best team and it doesn’t allow you to be sloppy in any way. I think all of those factors are helping us to progress.”