58 Monday June 13 2022 | the times
SportFootball
5
Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho
have been warned that they face an
uphill battle to force their way back into
Gareth Southgate’s plans in time for the
World Cup.
The Manchester United duo have
been cut adrift from the England squad
after a downturn in form at club level,
with the competition for places in
attack allowing Southgate to take a firm
stand with the duo.
United finished sixth in the Premier
League and will play in the Europa
League, rather than the Champions
League, next season, which raises the
prospect of their new manager, Erik ten
Hag, rotating his squad for those
N
ot much further to go
now. With England
limping wearily toward
the close of this never-
ending season, Saturday
evening in Wolverhampton made
their requirements very clear: can we
please find a nice, quiet beach and
send Gareth Southgate there for a rest.
The Nations League must be taking
its toll on everyone. Well, apart from
Declan Rice. Three fixtures down in
this international window, with one to
go, and it is patient, articulate,
positive Southgate who is struggling
to continue to be so eternally patient
and positive (the articulate is a given).
Just after this Italy game had
finished goalless and soulless (apart
from Rice), the match’s broadcasters,
Channel 4, did a short montage of
Southgate in his technical area, all
irritation, impatience, frustration; just
fleetingly, that mask of tolerance and
self-restraint can slip.Weary Southgate
That is what the Nations League
does to you. No one really cares
about the competition until you have
failed to score in open play for three
consecutive matches. Every
reasonable observer can accept these
games are end-of-season until you are
having to deal with the ignominy of
lying bottom of Nations League group
A3, while a bigger narrative is stitched
into Raheem Sterling failing to finish
a sitter by an empty Molineux back
post. What does that mean for
England’s World Cup ambitions?
Was the “impossible job” cliché ever
more applicable than in these past
three England games? At a time when
his players’ mentality and
conditioning are completely
unreflective of the World Cup
challenge, Southgate is trying to
refine a World Cup team. And he is
doing so comfortable in the
knowledge that savvy critics will
withhold judgment with divine
patience until the complete absence
of final-third penetration snaps it.
Strange to say, but the home game
against Hungary tomorrow actually
has quite a lot on it. If only because of
the optics.
Wearing funeral black on Saturday,
Southgate patiently yet wearily went
through the process of justifying whyOwen Slot
Chief Sports
WriterRashford and Sancho’s warning
midweek matches. Asked if that could
benefit England with United’s players
being fresher, Southgate pointed out
that the centre back Harry Maguire
was their only representative with the
national team, as Luke Shaw is injured.
The England manager added that
those on the outside would need to hit
the ground running next season to
come back into contention for the finals
in Qatar, which begin in November.
“We’ve only got one [United player]
with us,” Southgate said. “They’ve
[Rashford and Sancho] got a lot to do to
get back in the squad.”
Should Rashford, 24, start the new
season strongly, then Southgate would
consider recalling a player who has not
played for his country since theEuro 2020 final defeat by Italy on
penalties in July last year. His most
recent England goal came in a friendly
against Romania in June last year.
Southgate aired concerns over the
reliance on Harry Kane and Raheem
Sterling for goals after Saturday’s
drab Nations League stalemate with
Italy.
Rashford has 11 goals in 43
appearances under Southgate — the
same as the combined total of Phil
Foden (two goals in 15), Jack Grealish
(one in 23), Bukayo Saka (four in 17) and
Mason Mount (four in 30).
Sancho, 22, who has played only
72 minutes for England in the past year,
has three goals in 23 international
appearances.Paul Joyce
League A, group three
P W D L F A GD Pts
Italy 31 20 3 2 1 5
Hungary 31113304
Germany 30303 3 0 3
England 30 2 1 1 2 -1 2
Results Hungary 1 England 0; Italy 1
Germany 1; Germany 1 England 1;
Italy 2 Hungary 1; England 0 Italy 0;
Hungary 1 Germany 1.
Fixtures (7.45): Tomorrow England v
Hungary; Germany v Italy. Sept 23
Germany v Hungary; Italy v England.
Sept 26 England v Germany;
Hungary v Italy.Within 40 hours of the final whistle
blowing on the last Premier League
game on November 13, England’s squad
fly out to the World Cup. Passengers?
Only the fully fit can travel. There is no
leeway once they leave that runway, no
run-off period allowing players to
recover in time. Gareth Southgate is
now at the mercy of the fixture
computer and the intense strains on his
players. The computer says no respite.
Southgate has a deep squad and
plenty of fit stars will not even make it
to the departure area, but a certain fear
will stalk the England manager when
his players head off on three weeks’
holiday after tomorrow’s final
engagement, the Nations
League tie against Hungary
at Molineux.
There are long, if
lucrative, pre-season
tours down under or
across the pond, the
Community Shield
between Manchester
City and Liverpool for
potentially a third of his
outfield 20 on July 30, then 16
rounds of Premier League fixtures,
six European midweeks, and either one
or two blasts of the League Cup
(depending on Europe) before the
World Cup. Football’s coming home,
but it wants a good sleep first.
Throw in the September
international dates against Italy in
Milan and Germany at Wembley and
some players who start England’s first
World Cup group game against Iran on
November 21, such as Harry Kane,
Raheem Sterling, John Stones, Harry
Maguire, Phil Foden and Reece James,
could have clocked up 2,160 minutes of
football before boarding the plane to
Qatar. Declan Rice, assuming he stays
at West Ham United, who have a
Europa Conference League play-off,
could be on 2,340, almost 40 hours.
Rice drove England forward against
Italy at Molineux on Saturday yet for all
the Puccini fanfare, the soporific 0-0
stalemate proved more Nessun
Dormant. England cannot afford such
performances in November. They have
to be sharper, fresher. Southgate, ever
upbeat, found positives in Fikayo
Tomori, Jarrod Bowen and also Aaron
Ramsdale, who now looks to be No 2 to
Jordan Pickford ahead of Nick Pope.
“What’s important for the way we need
to play is the ability with the ball at his
England fear a perfect storm of
feet and he’s got that calmness and the
range of passing,” Southgate said of
Ramsdale.
Just stay fit. The onslaught of a
crammed season will sadly, inevitably,
cause some collateral damage to
Southgate’s selections. No wonder he
understands why players are
collectively beginning to voice
concerns at the calendar through the
Professional Footballers’ Association
(PFA), and particularly through its
energetic, reforming chief executive
Maheta Molango, and via the global
players’ union, Fifpro.
Southgate fears the perfect storm of
injury, fatigue and déjà vu. Before the
last World Cup, he lost Alex Oxlade-
Chamberlain (knee injury) and Joe
Gomez (ankle). Roy Hodgson was
denied the services of Kyle Walker
(pelvis), Andros Townsend (ankle) and
Theo Walcott (ACL) for Brazil 2014.
The lame game has always been
there. Fabio Capello was deprived of
David Beckham (achilles tendon)
for the 2010 World Cup
(though he still travelled).
Sven-Göran Eriksson was
unable to pick Ledley
King (foot) for 2006 or
Steven Gerrard (knee)
and Gary Neville
(metatarsal) in 2002.
Add the gambles that
managers such as
Eriksson took on unfit
players, especially metatarsal
men such as Beckham in 2002 and
Wayne Rooney in 2006, and their lack
of fitness ultimately cost the team.
England hardly boast a monopoly on
the wounded. France lost Arsenal’s
Laurent Koscielny to an achilles injury
in the 2018 Europa League semi-final
and then Marseille’s Dimitri Payet to a
hamstring in the climax of the same
competition, and went on to win the
World Cup in Moscow. Their strength
in depth is formidable.
Southgate — who won 57 caps as a
defender — knows all about the
pressures on England players. “Well, I
had that for about eight years,” he said.
“It’s manageable but the demands on
the players are huge and we are all
conscious that we can’t keep adding to
the calendar.”
He hears the “burnout” warnings
from the PFA and Fifpro, who recently
surveyed 1,055 players and discovered
that 54 per cent suffered injuries due to
intense workloads. He knows players’
organisations campaign for a minimum
four weeks’ break in the summer and
five days between games to keep
players in peak shape. “I’m sure players
are gaining more of a voice in that, and
understandably so,” Southgate said.
So does he have any influence with
clubs, any control, any information onplayers’ fitness when the season
resumes? Sitting in Billy’s Boot Room at
Molineux, the wonderful shrine/
lounge to the great Billy Wright’s feats,
Southgate almost laughed. “Control?”
he said. “None.
“But information sharing is pretty
good medically, and we get the
performance data from the Premier
League. So you’ve got some markers,
but equally there’s an understanding
that clubs might not want to share
certain things too early if they’ve got
players that might miss games.”
The unknown beckons. Outside
the brief September get-together,
Southgate has ruled out holding a
meeting with players. No time. “You
just won’t be able to,” he said. “I’ve got to
bear in mind the load for the players
and to drag them for a meeting would
actually end up being detrimental.”
Along with Hungary, Southgate’s
most challenging opponent this week is
the fixture computer, which on 9am
on Thursday could throw out a
blockbuster leg-sapper on November
12-13. “We’ve asked the Premier League
to have a think about things but the
fixture programme is complicated,”
Southgate said. “We’d have a
preference for none of those big games
but to be honest the difference it’s going
to make is fairly marginal.”
If a player suffers an injury, whether
the game is at 12.30pm on the Saturday
or 4.30pm on the Sunday, he is almost
certainly out of the World Cup. It’s fit or
bust. “We’re going to have to meet on
the Monday, fly on the Tuesday and
have to make quick decisions on
medical situations,” Southgate said. He
just hopes that it will not prove the
weekend that weakens England.
“The lower the load then, of course,
the less likely for injuries,” Southgate
said. “Some players are at their best
when they’re in a rhythm of playing and
you talk to some of our lads and they
want to play every game, because that’s
how they feel they get to their best level.
Others need longer recovery between
the matches to be at their best.”
There are no complaints from
England’s players. “I’m not saying
anything negative about the schedule,”
James Ward-Prowse, who reports back
to Southampton on July 6, said. “I’ve
dreamt, growing up as a kid, of wanting
to play football.”
Bowen has played 54 games this
season and is still full of running,
making a really positive impact in his
125 minutes across the games against
Hungary, Germany and Italy. “I’ve
loved it, every minute,” the West Ham
attacker said. He felt the negativity
outside the camp was excessive. “Yes,
100 per cent,” Bowen said. “The belief in
this group is really high.” England just
hope fitness levels remain as high.Henry Winter
Chief Football
WriterEngland v
Hungary
Uefa Nations League
Tomorrow,
kick-off 7.45pm
TV: Channel 4