Looking too far ahead is dangerous, says Gareth
ENGLAND have ‘ come unstuck’ at too many tournaments for Gareth Southgate to start plotting how he can avoid a knockout meeting with Germany, France or Portugal at Euro 2020.
The draw in Bucharest on Saturday pitted Southgate’s team against their World Cup semi-final conquerors Croatia, plus the Czech Republic and the winner of the play-off series featuring Scotland.
England will play all their three of their Group D games at Wembley and if they finish top, they would face the runner-up from Group F – far and away the toughest-looking pool – in Dublin.
Second place would put England up against the runner-up from Group E, which contains Spain, Poland, Sweden and a play-off winner, possibly Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland. It is a similar situation to the last World Cup in 2018, when avoiding top spot in their group sent England down what looked like an easier path to the final.
For Southgate, memories of past England disasters mean simply getting out of the group is the only objective.
‘We’re England and we don’t have the luxury very often of picking whether we win, or come second or third,’ he said.
‘We’ve come unstuck often enough not to think about those things, so we’ll set the objective of qualifying from the group first and we’ll go from there.
‘There are eight, ten top nations. The margins are really fine. When you look at the history of European Championship, there are so many different winners.’