Gareth Southgate has FA’s ‘unwavering support’ to take England to 2022 World Cup

The result of England’s meeting with Germany will not impact the Football Association’s backing of manager Gareth Southgate

Gareth Southgate will still be England manager for the 2022 World Cup regardless of Tuesday’s result against Germany, with FA chief executive Mark Bullingham saying he has the federation’s “unwavering support” and that they would be interested in discussing a new contract “beyond Qatar”.

The 50-year-old’s current deal runs until the end of the next tournament cycle, and faces one of the biggest games of his tenure at Wembley this week. The FA feel there has been great progress regardless of what happens, however, although there has not been any concrete discussions about.

“He’s got our unwavering support because we think he’s doing a brilliant job on and off the pitch,” Bullingham said. “Our support is unwavering. 100 per cent unwavering.

“We want him to carry on. He’s doing a great job. Regardless of Tuesday. Absolutely. Regardless of the group stage of the tournament we would have wanted him to carry on, not just in tournaments but if you look at Nations League as well, he did brilliantly in that.

“Gareth knows exactly how we feel about him. He knows that we think he’s doing a great job and we’d like him to carry on. We would love him to carry on, for sure, beyond this contract. We’ll get into that formal conversation after this tournament. But if you ask me now I’d say yes, we’d like him to carry on.”

Bullingham meanwhile said there was some hope of Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell being available for the Germany game, as it marks the day their period of self-isolation ends.

“Everyone’s aware of the issues clearly. I think the team’s done a very good job. They’ve moved them to a slightly different area of the hotel. They can see, even the Ed Sheeran concert they had rooms overlooking and could see it and feel like they were involved. I know they’re able to dial in to some team training sessions and meetings by Zoom. We’ve even created their own bubble with a physio we’ve brought in. We reacted to it as well as we could have done. They’re on their own individual training programme. It’s been a frustration, for sure, but the team have dealt with it really well.

“At the moment it’s very clear they are training on their own. We hope they will be available for selection.”

There is also excitement within the FA about staging the Euro 2020 semi-finals and final, with attendances also set to go up to 60,000. Discussions about officials and fans travelling were concluded this week, after there had been significant possibility of the games getting moved due to some of the UK government’s restrictions.

“It was definitely a real possibility of being moved. The Government were fantastic, working really close with them and Uefa, we got to a really good position. It has had to come and had to balance public health all the way through that but we came to a sensible decision.

“We are really looking forward to that. We always said that we wanted the Euros to provide the platform for next season. We are hoping we can do it really safely and all the evidence so far from the research programme that we are not causing any significant outbreaks for anything. The first three [games had] 58,000 people, with only 15 positive tests. That’s really positive. We know it is an outdoor environment. We know everyone is facing the same way, those are important factors. Providing we can put the infrastructure around, have transportation worked out, we are confident we can offer a safe environment.”