England manager Gareth Southgate has declared his team ready to create another piece of history on Saturday against France. The Three Lions have never overcome one of the elite footballing countries in a major tournament away from English soil.
But they will return to Al Bayt Stadium for their World Cup quarter-final convinced they can continue the habit since Southgate took over in 2016 of re-writing the record books. “We’ve made quite a bit of history over the last four or five years,” Southgate said. “Not all of it good!
“But that’s the great challenge. When you go back through those tournaments, you do see the teams that have knocked England out. We haven’t been able to beat one of those big teams, so that’s the next test for this team.”
Paraguay, Belgium, Cameroon, Denmark, Ecuador, Colombia, Sweden remains the full list of teams to have fallen to England in the knockout stages of the World Cup. But after reaching the 2018 semi-final and the Euro 2020 final, Southgate believes his team is finally ready to take on one of the big teams.
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“There is a lot of experience of these moments and they know that they’ve had to win games in different ways,” Southgate said. “For instance, they’ve had to come from behind in big matches.
“What we talked about before the Senegal game was keeping the relentless pressure going, not sitting back when we were ahead, making sure that we kept the intensity of our game. So we’ve got to do that now against the world champions.”
In 2018, Southgate ended a 12-year wait for England to win a knockout game at the tournament, when England beat Colombia to take the team further than they had been since 2006. Moreover, they did it on penalties, ending a miserable run of failures that stretched back past his own playing days to the 1990 World Cup.
England reached their first major semi-final for 28 years, then at Euro 2020, the appearance at the European Championships finals ended 55 years of hurt. Well, almost!
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Defeat against Italy at Wembley simply mirrored Greenwood’s failings in 1982 and every England manager since Sir Alf Ramsey in the knockout stages. They cannot beat the big teams. Southgate now feels his developing England team are finally ready, though.
“They [France] have obviously lost quite a few players ahead of this tournament – and yet you look at the team and you look at the squad, it is still remarkably strong,” Southgate said. “They are full of speed, they are compact and difficult to play against.
“You know the style of game you are going to get and it is a brilliant challenge for us now. We are different, there is no doubt about that. We are obviously further down the line as a team.”
It was top of the pops in 1996, 1998, 2002 and even 2018 – and is currently tucked in again at No 37. So perhaps this time might finally be the one when ‘Football’s Coming Home’.
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