England team ‘leak’ irks Southgate
Manager says the English media must decide ‘if they want to help team or not’
The build-up to England’s World Cup clash with Panama has become overshadowedbydebateaboutwhether the media should have reported a list of 23 names in formation on a notepad in assistant manager Steve Holland’s hand during a training session. Seriously? Football is in danger of eating itself, sometimes.
C-bombs and f-words were flying all over social media at journalists yesterday. Even England manager Gareth Southgate spoke about it to broadcasters, suggesting he was not irritated at all, then sounding a tad irritated.
“It doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” Southgate told Talksport. “There’s a squad of 23 names on the sheet, the next sheet has different players in different positions because we swap people in and swap people out. The stories are then run as they are.
“For me, no drama but obviously any time if we were to give the opposition the opportunity of having our team is a disadvantage to us and so of course our media has to decide whether they want to help the team or not. But, given that was just a squad list, it doesn’t make any difference really.”
For what it’s worth: the media’s job is not that of cheerleaders – that is for FATV, the FA’S website and their social feeds – and the picture was taken in the tiny 15-minute window of training open to the world’s media each day, not by a long lens camera up a tree half a mile away. Is it that hard to take extra care for such a short amount of time?
There was a journalist from Portugal there. What if there was a photographer from Panama who got the same shot and fed it back to his team?
The big deduction from the picture was that Raheem Sterling was to be dropped for Marcus Rashford, yet belief in the camp yesterday was that the Manchester City forward will keep his place.
Southgate has had plenty to ponder since Harry Kane’s late, stoppage-time winner against Tunisia. If he dropped Sterling it would be a huge blow to the player’s confidence. Yet Sterling didn’t even play that badly against Tunisia. So he missed an open goal? He missed chance after chance after chance for Manchester City, and still ended their Premier League title winning season as second top scorer, with 23 goals, behind Sergio Aguero.
The Panamanians have been open about their intention to give England a tough, physical challenge and Ruben Loftuscheek is set to come in for the injured Dele Alli, struggling with a thigh strain all week, adding height – he is 6ft 3ins – and muscle to Southgate’s central midfield.
“Everyone can see his physical size but he has lovely soft feet,” Southgate told ITV.
“He receives the ball really well surrounded in tight areas. He is strong enough to hold people off. He has great acceleration driving with the ball at opposing players.”
Don’t give too much away, eh, Gareth?