Gareth Southgate admits he cannot bank on England’s Champions League final players ahead of Nations League

Southgate picked six Spurs players and three from Liverpool in his squad, even though those nine players will only be able to start training with the England group the day before they fly to Porto for the Nations League final

Gareth Southgate has admitted that he will not be able to bank on any of the nine Champions League final participants playing for England in the Nations League finals next month.

Southgate picked six Spurs players and three from Liverpool in his 27-man squad, even though those nine players will only be able to start training with the England group the day before they fly to Porto for the Nations League final.

This means that most of England’s training at St George’s Park will be done with a depleted squad. And Southgate said he will have to plan as if the Spurs and Liverpool men - including some of his most senior players - will not be ready. “We have got to prepare with the rest as though we have none of them available and go from there,” Southgate said. “And then make decisions as the guys start to arrive.”

The issue is made even harder by the fact that Harry Kane and Harry Winks have not played since Spurs’ Champions League quarter-final first leg against Manchester City on 9 April, and are both racing to get fit for the Champions League final in Madrid. Kane sustained an ankle ligament injury against City and is still doing rehab. Meanwhile Winks underwent minor groin surgery on 29 April but has now started running again and is hoping to return to training over the weekend.

Southgate admitted that Kane’s fitness was “one of the unknowns” going into the Nations League finals, raising the question whether he will be fit enough to face Liverpool before his scheduled England meet-up. It is a difficult situation and Southgate admitted that he will have to “play it by ear”. Southgate said he would still consider Kane for the Nations League even if he does not play in the Champions League final, and will delay the decision on his captain as late as possible.

“I don't think it is an absolute [Kane] has to play there or he is not ready four days later,” Southgate said. “Equally he could play in the final and not be right four days later for us. We are just going to have to play it by ear because he is not going to have had a game prior to that point.”

There are some players whose fitness Southgate will decide on next week, but he said he will wait until as late as possible before deciding on Kane: “Where there are one or two others we need to know a lot more about in the next week, he [Kane] is one I will make an exception for in that I will see how it goes in the final week.”

The nine Spurs and Liverpool players will only be likely to be able to train for one day before England fly to Porto on 5 June, before facing the Netherlands on 6 June. And Southgate said he will have to judge their physical and mental freshness after the exhausting Champions League final on 1 June.

“I think the psychological factor is huge,” Southgate said. “You're 30 years in football and the knowledge of what it is to go into those big matches and come out on either side, that has to guide you. We know the individual players really well to be able to sense when they are feeling in the right place and when they are not. You pick some of that up on the training pitch but you pick a lot up from conversations and body language and they can't hide.”

And Southgate said it was not as simple as predicting that the Champions League winners would be ready for Holland and the losers would not be. “I wouldn't say the guys that win are going to be fine and ready for a game either,” he said. “They will have had an enormous high and that needs a lot of refocusing onto another challenge in a very small space of time. I don't think it is as straightforward as those that win are great and ready to go, those that lose might be ready to get out there and ready to fight and we just have to monitor that.”

The first 12 players - those not involved in the FA Cup, Europa League or Champions League finals - will meet up at St George’s Park next week. There will be a second meet-up the following week, when Southgate will assess fitness levels and trim his 27-man squad down to 23. But he will be able to make further changes before England fly out to Portugal for players who are injured.