‘We want third place’
Southgate demands one last effort in Belgium play-off
Gareth Southgate says England are determined to win their World Cup third-place play-off against Belgium, but admits coming within 22 minutes of reaching the final before the extra-time defeat by Croatia will “live with me for ever”.
The England manager will not name his team until this morning as he waits to see who has recovered from the physical and mental exertions of Wednesday’s demanding semi-final in Moscow. There are several injury concerns, and Ashley Young and Jesse Lingard are suffering from illness.
The delay in selecting the side suggests Southgate does not want to make wholesale changes as he attempts to win the fixture, which would mean being awarded a medal. It would be England’s highest finish at a tournament since 1966 and their best performance on foreign soil.
Southgate revealed that he had watched the Croatia match again at 4am and that the defeat had been “testing for me individually”, but added that coming so close “drives” him to go one step further at Euro 2020 because he can see “things are possible”.
He claimed that the competition in two years would feel “like a home tournament”, with several games, including the semi-finals and final, at Wembley, and likened its potential impact to the London Olympics in 2012.
“It’s going to be brilliant,” Southgate said. “We’re going to have a tournament where the players are going to experience as close to what we experienced in 1996 and 1966. That’s incredible for everybody. We saw what the Olympics was like. And, again, we’ll have the players inspired by what’s happened over the last few weeks. They can see the possible impact.”
So inspirational has been England’s campaign at this World Cup, in which their biggest achievement been to reconnect with the supporters and banish the fear of playing for the country, that the manager will write letters to each of his players.
“I have done that with the staff and I will do that with the players at the end,” Southgate said. “It’s quite nice to receive a letter in this day and age. There’s something special about that… I think it’s nice to be able to personalise things, and that’s how we like to work.”
There are lessons to be learnt and, also, a great deal of disappointment to overcome.
“We were 20 minutes from a World Cup final … that is going to live with me for ever, there is no doubt about that,” Southgate said. “I was conscious that I had to raise everybody yesterday, but I’m up watching the game at four o’clock this morning.
“But I can survive that for a few more days, and the players bring and give me energy because the way they and the staff have responded over the last couple of days has been absolutely incredible. But I couldn’t have done the last few weeks like I’ve been the last two days.”
For Southgate, there is the remarkable – and “emotion-fuelled” – experience of having been on the losing end of England’s past two semi-final defeats, as a player at Euro 96 and now as a manager. “Contextually, this is different in that I feel that team [1996], with all its experience, playing at home, were closer to the finished article and knew a lot were not going to have the chance again – and I was younger so I did not have that balance and perspective in my life,” he said.
“Now my care is for everybody else and picking them up first and foremost, energising them for this game. We’ve got to to finish well. We’ve set a level of working and performing that we want to maintain and take pride in.
“Your responsibilities lie elsewhere as a manager. It’s different but no less painful, for sure, but I’ve also got to get everyone else through the next three days. When you get close to success, it drives you more, because you can see things are possible. I’ve always felt that way.
“Anything I’ve done in my life, you want to be in the games that matter and you want to be winning things where possible.”
That includes the play-off with Belgium, who beat England – albeit in a match between two shadow teams – in the group stages and with their manager, Roberto Martinez, equally as determined to win.
“We have high motivation to perform and finish with a medal at a World Cup, which only one English team have ever done,” Southgate said. “We owe it as much to ourhas
selves as to our nation to finish well. We’ve set the standard of how we work, the standard of how we play, and we want to maintain those standards right to the end.”
Asked whether he was afraid that this might be as good as it gets as England manager, and that a big opportunity had been lost, Southgate added: “I’m not scared. Not even of the big bad wolf, really. We’re here to try and improve every time we play, every time we go into a tournament.
“There were low expectations this time which relieved the pressure, but there was still pressure [on the players] to get out of the group, win a knockout game, win a penalty shoot-out. They coped brilliantly with that.”