Southgate wanted a lion’s den for his kids
Gareth Southgate is looking to the future as he prepares for England’s latest Nations League matches.
His 26-man squad features six uncapped players, including the first player born this century to be called up in Jadon Sancho and has an average age of just 23. There is a sense of a new era taking shape with Borussia Dortmund’s Sancho getting the nod, along with James Maddison of Leicester City and Mason Mount, the Chelsea youngster currently on loan at Derby in the Championship. Southgate is keen to see them all on the international stage and he may throw them in at the deep end for Friday’s trip to Croatia. It is a very rapid reunion with the country who ended England’s World Cup hopes at the semi-final stage this summer, but it will have a very different feel. The match will be played behind closed doors in Rijeka, as the Croatians serve a penalty imposed by UEFA after a swastika was marked on the pitch ahead of their Euro 2016 qualifier at home to Italy. Although the quality will be high against the World Cup finalists, Southgate knows his young Lions won’t be getting the full international experience he would prefer. “It’ll be the first time I’ve ever been in a game like that,” he says. “It will be a very different feel, unique. “In some ways I would like our players to be experiencing going there with the stadium bouncing and Croatia reminding us of what happened in the summer. “I could then tell the players to go and deal with it, but we haven’t got that. “We have a different sort of experience and we have to make sure that we apply ourselves in the right way. “My preference would be to go to a full stadium but that is not the case and we will adapt to the situation we find ourselves in. “The lads will still know they are playing for England. In some venues in the past, there would have been small attendances, so you just have to adjust. “But the quality of opponent is high, so we will have enough of a challenge. “I was watching Ivan Rakitic playing for Barcelona against Tottenham and I was reminded of the quality of the players that they have. “The beauty of this competition is that you get to test yourself against top teams, so for us they are the games that we will learn most from. “They a real test for the players, and a real test tactically for the players and all of our staff.” Such is the callow nature of Southgate’s squad that not a single player in it has yet reached 50 caps. One of the closest to that mark is Raheem Sterling. The Manchester City winger is a comparative veteran of international football with 44 appearances, having made his debut in November 2012. Yet while fans watch him scoring regularly for City, it is three years since he scored the last of his two goals for England. He is a player who divides opinion like few others, but in Southgate, he has an ardent supporter, who backs Sterling to end his international drought. Sterling did not score at the World Cup in Russia, but he stayed in the team for the crucial matches and was often a thorn in the side for opponents. “In simplistic terms, we are just waiting for him to add goals to everything else he is producing,” says the England boss. “His level of performance with us has been really good. The one missing piece is his finishing. “If he had scored twice in the summer, everyone would have been viewing his tournament in a much more positive way. “With his team-mates and with us as staff, he knows how much we think of him and what a valuable part of the team we feel he is. “I am confident he can transform that into his performances. He has started well with City and should feel good about what he is doing. “Look at last season with City, people said, ‘Will he get in the team?’ He took it on and was one of their leading scorers and he had a massive impact in the team that won the league. “This time, Riyad Mahrez has come in and there is another challenge. Boom, there he is again. “All the evidence shows he can overcome these difficulties. “We look forward to working with him all the time. He is desperate to do well with England because it has been a big part of his career from 17 up – and he takes great pride in that as well.” Friday’s game in Croatia will be the first for Southgate since agreeing an extension to his contract that will take him to after the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. He has set the bar very high after leading England to their first semi-final for 22 years, but he is determined this won’t be the high-water mark. “We got to a semi-final and it’s not just a case of: ‘what next’?” he states. “We didn’t expect the difficulties we’ve had at the start of this season with playing time and things like that. “But then you have a decision of whether you are going to walk away from it or embrace the challenge and take it on. “I was very clear I wanted to take it on and embrace having to make different sorts of decisions than England managers have had to make in the past. “That is exciting because we’ve got an exciting group of players coming through.”