World Cup 2018, England vs Colombia: No weight of history on young team's shoulders, says Gareth Southgate
England meet the South Americans at Moscow’s Otkritie Arena on Tuesday night
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Your support makes all the difference.Gareth Southgate does not want his England players to feel burdened by tournaments past when they take to pitch before their World Cup round of 16 clash with Colombia and believes his side have learned from previous failures.
England meet the South Americans at Moscow’s Otkritie Arena on Tuesday night and will hope to emerge victorious from a knockout tie at a major international tournament for the first time in 12 years.
A 1-0 win over Ecuador booked a place in the World Cup quarter-finals back in 2006, but England then suffered a penalty shoot-out defeat to Portugal. Elimination has come at the hands of Germany, Italy and - most infamously - Iceland in the years since.
Just three players to play in that Iceland defeat at Euro 2016 - Dele Alli, Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane - are expected to start in Moscow on Tuesday, but the memory of that night in Nice is still raw.
Beating Colombia would help put that disappointment to bed and perhaps lift a weight off England’s shoulders too. Southgate, though, wants his current squad to be judged on their own performances alone rather than make up for the failures of predecessors.
“I don’t think we should feel it that way,” he said, when asked whether victory would be a weight off England’s shoulders. “This team should not be burdened by previous teams who had far more experience and far more decorated players.
“It would not be fair to put that weight on their shoulders. They have got to go out with the freedom to show people they can play in a slightly different way and express their technical skill and the growing tactical understanding that they have. For me, I am proud to work with them and proud of the way they are working and training.”
Southgate described the meeting with Colombia as England’s biggest game for a decade last week, but at his pre-match press conference on Monday, he was keen to stress that his words were more an observation than an opinion.
“When I say ’10 years’, it is more the fact that nobody else has got over the line so what have these lads got to lose? We have to separate history from what this team are trying to do, their own journey, and they are going to be more exciting. Tomorrow is a great game for them to attack.”
Southgate knows, however, that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The Iceland defeat cannot weigh on his players’ minds but it could provide lessons and during preparations for this World Cup, the England manager ensured it was not wholly forgotten.
“We learned a lot from it,” he said. “It is one of many games that we have unpicked and tried to learn lessons from because it is silly not to look at previous tournaments and previous big matches and try to identify what we can learn from those.
“But that is also true of some of the games that are going on in the tournament – how teams are getting undone, the decisions they are making during games, the set plays they are conceding. I don’t think that game is any different to any of the others, really, and I think the team are in a very different place.
“They are playing with confidence; the performances have been confident ones. Some of the games two years ago were a bit more of a struggle in terms of finding more rhythm. I am happy with where they are at, they are excited for the game and we are looking forward to what is going to be a very good game.”
It is generally thought that England are on the more favourable side of draw for this World Cup knockout stage. Victory against Colombia would bring either Sweden or Switzerland in the quarter-finals, while either Croatia or hosts Russia would await in the last four.
Sensibly, Southgate would not be drawn on permutations. England, he claimed, are only thinking about Colombia on Tuesday.
“I can see everybody is more excited as the team progress, but we have to think separately of how everybody else is thinking, otherwise we just get carried away on the wave of emotion and not thinking clearly about what we have to affect, focusing on performance,” he said.
“We have to control the bits we have to control. It really is about training as we train, preparing as we have prepared and let performances take care of themselves and generally speaking you get the results you deserve.”
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