Southgate admits ‘it’s complicated’ ahead of Euro squad headache
GARETH Southgate says he is facing a “complicated” Euro 2024 selection choice given England’s potential fitness and availability issues heading into the summer.
This is the first time since the 2018 World Cup that the 57-cap former defender is having to pick a 23man squad for a major tournament after it was expanded to 26 following the coronavirus pandemic.
But Southgate could name even more than that at the provisional squad announcement on May 21 as the England boss will have injury concerns to deal with and the late arrival of key players.
The final squad does not have to be submitted to UEFA until late on June 7, but cup final participation is set to dent numbers for the warmup friendlies against Bosnia in Newcastle and Iceland at Wembley.
Asked how many extra headaches returning to a 23-man squad will throw up given the issues he is juggling, Southgate said: “Yeah, it’s going to be complicated, because firstly the injury situations that we have.
“Some will be back playing at the weekend, some will be back playing in a couple of weeks, some will be really close to the end of the season.
“Then we’re going to have the European finals, the FA Cup final and the two friendlies that we’ve got ourselves. It’s inevitable we’re going to be naming a longer squad, which is what we did before the Euros here even though we were dealing with 26 then.
“We really don’t know (how many will be in the provisional squad) because there are so many questions on the injuries at the moment.
“But we’ve gained valuable information about so many players this week.”
Absentee-hit England suffered their first defeat in 15 months in Saturday’s late 1-0 loss Brazil at Wembley, where Jude Bellingham scored an even later goal to salvage a 2-2 draw against Belgium three days later.
Southgate had to experiment far more than he expected during the friendly double-header due an unprecedented injury list that left him without a third of the 40-odd players on his long list against Brazil.