The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Gareth Southgate plans to help England evolve in time for Euro 2020
Southgate plans to help team improve and evolve in time for Euro 2020
England’s World Cup semi-final run has come with a dose of reality that is fuelling manager Gareth Southgate’s desire to keep developing and evolving.
Football is not coming home this summer but this young side have managed to reconnect with fans that had become disillusioned over the years.
The agonising 2-1 extra-time defeat to wily Croatia was compounded on Saturday as Belgium’s ‘Golden Generation’ won the third-place play-off 2-0 in St Petersburg, thanks to goals from Thomas Meunier and Eden Hazard.
Both matches underlined Southgate’s belief that his semi-finalists are still not a top-four team but he hopes to use the summer as a springboard, looking ahead to Euro 2020.
“I think we are very realistic about the level that we are,” the England manager said.
“It’s been really nice. We’ve had a lot of praise but also balanced with that a lot of reality as well.
“We don’t kid ourselves at all. We know exactly the areas that we hope to get better in and we really enjoy working with this group of players.
“We’re not in club football where we have a chequebook where we can go and buy new players. We have to coach and develop and improve as a group.
“That then requires the players to have a willingness to learn and improve and they’ve shown that in abundance over the last seven weeks in particular so that continues.
“It’s nice that we’ve reached a semifinal because that builds belief and it gives some momentum to the team.
“There’s some evidence that they can have some success and what that would feel like, which I think allows the players to commit even more to the England shirt but we’re also very realistic about the constant need to keep improving.”
Regardless of the work to come, England will enjoy some much-needed downtime before the club season starts in earnest.
It is also only eight weeks until they reconvene and kick off the inaugural Uefa Nations League campaign against Spain at Wembley.
“We now have some big fixtures in the autumn, playing the likes of Spain, Switzerland and Croatia,” Southgate said.
“So they’re great opportunities for us to develop, to improve, to try things, to look at players and we have to just constantly try to evolve and improve, and I feel that we continue to do that as a team.
“We’ve done that particularly over the last eight months and we’ve ended up having a brilliant adventure here that every member of our party — players and staff — have enjoyed immensely.
“So, that is what we keep having to do. Keep reviewing how we play, how might we improve, what can we get better at and we’ll constantly continue to try and do that.”
Southgate and his group have learned a lot from their time in Russia but the fact they were just 20 minutes from a World Cup final will continue to haunt them.
It is a missed opportunity that the England manager recognises, yet the former defender could not ask any more from his young side.
“Initially I felt it was important to tell them how proud I was of what they’ve done, recognise how far they’d got,” Southgate said.
“We’ve not won a knockout game for 12 years with far more experienced teams than this one.
“We also recognised after the semifinal where we stood, which is exactly what we found out again today.
“We haven’t hidden in terms of where we see our progress. We haven’t hidden in terms of what we think needs to improve but we leave here having progressed a lot as a team.
“The experience that the players have had, the enjoyment that they’ve had, is important for them in an England shirt.
“The performances are performances they’ll have learned a lot from, in victory and in defeat.
“Now we have to look to the future.” After the squad’s flight back from St Petersburg landed in Birmingham yesterday afternoon, Southgate added: “We now have players who I think can stand on their on two feet in the Premier League against other players from around Europe and the world and they have proved that on a world stage at different age groups.
“Of course, managers need time. I was given an opportunity here to blood younger players in this tournament and they have proved that they could perform at a really good level.
“Managers at clubs need that time as well and also, you have got to be brave enough to take those decisions if you think that it’s the right thing for the long term.”