See you in Qatar
England will not team up again until World Cup
AS Gareth Southgate picked over the bones of another less than satisfactory week in a Wembley corridor late on Monday night, Phil Foden passed behind him. Tapping his manager on the shoulder, a handshake and a hug followed.
For the England manager and his players, that’s it for now. Goodbye. The next time they see each other will be in the third week of November, six days before the start of the World Cup.
It is a quite unusual situation. Despite the much-needed fillip provided by England’s comeback against Germany, Southgate knows and admits his players are in need of something to restore confidence whittled away by six games without a win, stretching back to the end of last season.
Equally, he cannot work with them or even see them as he looks to put right what is wrong. It is a conundrum to which there is not necessarily an answer.
‘I think the players have been through a lot and the psychology of it all is fascinating for us at the moment,’ said Southgate. ‘There are different expectations and different levels of experience in the group.
‘Some young ones are actually handling it brilliantly but there are some who are needing help and guidance. They will be thinking: “What is this?”
‘We have talked about how the shirt feels and they are experiencing for the first time a little bit of what some of the older ones have been through in the past. What we face now is unique to us compared to any other sport internationally.
‘The rugby players get eight weeks together just for the Six Nations. The cricketers are together all year on central contracts. This is the difference.
‘This tournament is unique. We don’t get the four weeks we had ahead of the World Cup in Russia. But we have to adapt better than anybody else.’
With 20 minutes left on Monday night against a German team who have also been struggling, England were pretty much on their knees. Two goals down and facing the kind of final-whistle reception not heard at Wembley for some time.
From there, 3-3 represented one of international football’s great get-out-of-jail moments.
England’s comeback — from 0-2 to 3-2 in 12 minutes — came on the back of the kind of quick, incisive attacking football not seen from Southgate’s team since their run to the final of last summer’s Euros.
That it took a desperate match situation to provoke it is troubling, but it is still there somewhere, buried beneath all the uncertainty and angst.
‘That (20 minutes) is what we want, of course,’ said Southgate.
‘That’s the style and type of play we know they are capable of. We have to keep instilling the belief and the confidence in them to be able to do it.
‘I think it’s a big step forward.
‘Not everything was wrong before this game and not everything is right now. There are some big steps we have got to take but we needed to see character and how they would deal with adversity and you can only take a step at a time.
‘We have had a couple of really tough experiences and you don’t necessarily go and win the next game 4-0 against a top-level opponent. ‘You have to take small steps.’ Southgate had hoped at one stage to at least arrange some kind of meeting with his prospective 26-man squad between now and the World Cup but has conceded defeat on that.
‘No, there just isn’t going to be time,’ he said.
‘They are going to have too many matches and we have to respect what they are doing with their clubs.
‘We have got a lot of analysis of the opposition to do.’
England’s players face eight rounds of Premier League fixtures between now and the World Cup. There are four Champions League games to be played for many of them, too.
The build up to the tournament is unique but the consolation for England is that there will be 32 teams in Qatar and, for the vast majority, it will be exactly the same.