Southgate puts stars on the spot

ENGLAND stars have already been ordered to start practising penalties ahead of the World Cup.

Gareth Southgate was the only one of 12 players to miss his spotkick in the Euro ’96 semi-final shootout against Germany – and he is covering all bases now.

The Three Lions boss said: “It isn’t chance and it isn’t luck. It is about performing a skill under pressure.

“So there are opportunities to improve technically, to work as a team on how we want to approach that, to be very clear on the processes and go through some scenarios that put you as close to that situation as you possibly can.

“I think we should do that, I think it’s right to be as meticulous as we can be – but also there is a balance because we haven’t got that far in the last few tournaments.

“We can’t take our eye off preparing correctly for Tunisia, that is going to be a really difficult game.

“They are ranked just below us, they are not a team that are 40th in the world, they are 14th, so we have to get preparations right across every part of the game for every match.

“But we don’t want to just wait until the knockout stage to prepare for a penalty scenario. We started something around that in March and we will continue that.

“I think it is then a better process than just throwing it in at the end.”

England have lost seven of their last eight shoot-outs.