Southgate plays it cool over the heat
Manager unworried by 30C for today’s match No confirmation of XI despite Holland’s leak
Gareth Southgate has defended his decision not to acclimatise England to the heat of Nizhny Novgorod before today’s game against Panama that could clinch qualification from Group G.
England – who will seal their place in the last 16 with a victory – trained at their Repino base, where it was 19C, yesterday morning before flying here, where it is forecast to be 31C at kick-off today. Panama arrived almost 24 hours before Southgate’s squad and trained in the stadium yesterday afternoon.
Southgate had been given the option of preparing somewhere hotter before the tournament, but stuck to his original choice of Repino as his training base. The decision is understood to have been viewed as a risk by some FA staff and comes a fortnight after England rugby head coach Eddie Jones was criticised for basing his side at sea level before their first two Tests against South Africa, both of which were at altitude.
But a bullish Southgate is adamant that his decision is the right one. “We never trained at the stadium before any of our qualifiers,” he said. It makes sense to train earlier in the day, recover and travel. It’s about the flow of the day to leave maximum time for recovery.
“We kick-off at 3pm [local time], so there’s time from that session to the game. The heat is different in different parts of the country. We have to adapt to that. There’s no physiological benefit to train in the heat the couple of weeks before and thinking there’ll be an adaptation. We are a team who keep possession and in the heat that will be key when we need to attack with the ball or rest with possession.”
Despite his assistant Steve Holland apologising to the squad for appearing to leak the team, Southgate refused to confirm his starting line-up. Dele Alli will miss out after playing on with a groin strain against Tunisia and South- gate admitted it can be hard to convince his players to be honest about their fitness during such big games.
“There are two parts to that,” said Southgate. “One is performance aspect. Is an injury going to inhibit your level of performance, which is key to the team? It’s difficult for a player.
“We’ve not lost any time with Dele, not through design but through luck and also him understanding it’s nothing more serious. We’ve been very fortunate, but also prepared well.
“It’s the first muscular issue we’ve had over the three and a half weeks. To have 22 players available was unlikely. That may not happen because we’ll have contact injuries as the tournament progresses, but as a manager, you don’t take a risk with the player because a performance aspect comes into it. But players aren’t always going to tell you 100 per cent how they are.”
Jordan Henderson added: “You know as a player when an injury is bad enough you have to come off. I’m one of the worst, wanting to battle through. But if it’s affecting performance the manager and staff will be able to see. You have to know in your own body when it’s serious enough to come off.”
Southgate said: “Normally Hendo plays through and I get an angry call from Jurgen [Klopp] saying, ‘Why the hell didn’t you take him off?’”
England need a win to keep pace with Belgium at the top of Group G after they beat Tunisia 5-2 yesterday, but their manager, Roberto Martinez, said he would play a weakened side when the two meet on Thursday. Romelu Lukaku, who scored twice, is a doubt with an ankle injury for a game which is likely to decide who will top the group.
“If we could have seven days to prepare the game I would say carry on with the same starting 11,” said Martinez. “There’ll be opportunities for other players.”
Against Panama, a nation whose name is more associated with hats, England could do with scoring a hatful – especially if those goals are shared around, with not all of them going to a certain Harry Kane.
The history of English football would more than suggest it is foolish to count on any positive result involving the Three Lions but, privately at least, Gareth Southgate will hope that when they come off the pitch this afternoon in the searing heat of Nizhny Novgorod after facing Panama in their World Cup Group G encounter, it will not again just be about his captain.
“We wish we had Kane!” was the headline in the German newspaper Bild earlier this week following the striker’s two-goal, match-winning contribution to England’s precious victory over Tunisia and if a publication from the homeland of the world champions is saying that, Southgate knows he has a special player and a special talent in Kane. But the England manager knew that anyway, which is partly why he gave Kane the armband, and partly why Kane also did not do the pre-match media duties here, which were taken on by Southgate’s “second captain”, Jordan Henderson.
Otherwise there would have been more questions about Kane’s desire to win the Golden Boot as the World Cup’s leading scorer – especially after another brace from Belgium’s Romelu Lukaku – and a reinforcement of the theory that this is the Harry Kane team.
Of course, all that matters is the victory and if that comes courtesy of one, two or three goals by Kane then who cares? If England win they are in the last 16, which will also be only the second time in their last 15 major tournaments that they have won their opening two games. Whatever the opposition that is not to be sniffed at.
Their final Group G fixture is against Belgium, who may well be resting Lukaku and Eden Hazard, and the numbers those two have produced in recent games have been seriously impressive. Lukaku has scored 23 goals in his past 20 games for Belgium, with four assists. Eden Hazard has 11 goals and 11 assists.
For England only Kane can challenge that. So who is going to be England’s Hazard to Kane being their Lukaku? It is an issue that Southgate is across. If England are going to be serious challengers then someone else has to step up and he was asked about it – not for the first time – at his press conference. “We’re trying to get a forward line that is exciting in its movement and has scored goals at club level,” Southgate said.
“In the end, that will come if they keep getting in the right areas and making the right runs, creating the chances we did the other night [against Tunisia]. The goals will come.
“We have an outstanding goalscorer as a No 9, and people like [Jamie] Vardy with an exceptional record in big matches as well. Danny Welbeck has a lot of goals [16 for England, one more than Kane]. You want goals coming from all areas.
“Frankly, though, it doesn’t matter who scores in a tournament. If Harry hadn’t scored, we’d have been answering questions about him.”
Which is true. But the statistics are a serious concern. Kane, Dele Alli – who is out injured – Jesse Lingard and Raheem Sterling had 91 goals between them in club football last season but only one is scoring for his country. In fact it is just five goals in 73 England games for Sterling, Alli and Lingard combined and the stats do not get any better however you analyse them.
Sterling has not scored for England for 987 days and has just two goals in 38 appearances – the equivalent of a full Premier League season – and those were against Lithuania and Estonia. Alli’s last goal came in Oct 2016, when he scored against Malta, and he has two in 26 appearances, while Lingard has one goal – his recent strike in the friendly against Holland – from 13 caps. Marcus Rashford, who may well replace Sterling, has scored just three times in 20 games.
Southgate simply has to get more goals and from someone else but Kane. It is no disrespect to Panama that facing them offers a good opportunity, even if the 55th-ranked nation in the world, at their first World Cup, and with a domestic league that is less than 40 years old, have a far stronger defensive record than might be expected.
Panama conceded three against Belgium on Monday and six in a recent friendly against Switzerland but in five other matches just two goals have gone against them.
Against that, England have only scored more than two goals twice in their past 28 matches and going into this match have a goal difference five inferior to Belgium, who thumped Tunisia 5-2 yesterday.
It means, unless England go goal crazy, that Belgium will need only a draw on Thursday to win the group. That is if they want to win the group – the route forward appears more comfortable for the runners-up, in fact, which may partly explain Roberto Martinez’s suggestion he would leave out big names including Dries Mertens.
For England and for Southgate the permutations do not matter, not until Panama have been negotiated, and even then there is a theory that the manager will try to build on momentum and confidence by wanting to beat Belgium and therefore take a big scalp.
Part of that confidence building is what Southgate’s assistant Steve Holland called improving “the balance of goalscorers in the team”.
That means someone else, and not just Kane who, in fairness, has only just claimed his first goals in a major tournament, although it is also 10 in 10 under Southgate, taking responsibility. “He’s the one player that has the track record at this level that you can bank on,” Holland said of Kane.
But England need more than one player to hang their hat on.