How facing Germany for England has been a haunting experience for Gareth Southgate

'I’ve been through the worst that I could so I think that gives me freedom when I’m managing players to allow them to go and express themselves,' the England manager said on Tuesday

Gareth Southgate has his penalty saved by Andreas Köpke during the penalty shoot out at the 1996 Euro semi-final between England and Germany (Getty)

Germany have a habit of lulling England into a mood of false optimism. The national team have not lost on German soil since 1987, have won each of their last three games in the country and tend to fly home from the place convinced they are staring into a new dawn.

Gareth Southgate sees the pitfalls, too. He has started two games against Germany for England as a player and on both occasions saw the incumbent manager - Terry Venables in 1996 and Kevin Keegan four years later - leave the post because of the result. There was his own missed penalty in Euro ’96 which Southgate showed the players a video of this week – saved by none other than Andreas Kopke, who will be in the Germany dug-out as goalkeeping coach on Wednesday night.

The England manager won’t be looking him up. “If he is around,” he said. “If he’s got a pair of gloves on I’ll know who he is. With respect I’ve never looked at loads of pictures of it other than from the back of the goal. I don’t normally shake hands with the opposition goalkeeping coach…”

But the 2000 match he played in for Keegan, at the old Wembley, was in some ways worse because the torture lasted longer. Keegan fielded Southgate as a sweeper-cum-holding midfielder that October day – a position he not filled since his early days at Crystal Palace – and there were a collective national gasp. The notion was so ridiculed on the ‘Hold the Back Page’ TV show, the night before the game, that Keegan – watching on television – instructed FA director David Davies to ring in and demand the transmission be cut. England lost and Keegan quit in the toilet, in what the Independent’s writer dubbed ‘the day of the S.’ “That is, S for Southgate’s selection, S for soaked, S for sad and, ultimately, S for so long.”

The 1996 experience was clearly the most searing - “something which helped shaped me as a person, builds your mental strength, gives you – years down the line – that feeling that actually ‘what is there to fear in life,’” as Southgate put it on Tuesday night. “I’ve been through the worst that I could so I think that gives me freedom when I’m managing players to allow them to go and express themselves.”

But both defeats came in relatively dark days for both nations. It was the abject failure of the German nation to progress to the knock out stage of Euro 2000 which sparked the overhaul which has made them world class. Southgate sees that picture, too.