Gareth Southgate embraces pressure as England seek revenge against Croatia

Announcing Gareth Southgate’s contract extension this week, the FA chief executive, Martin Glenn, acknowledged the England manager had come in rather quietly. “In the past we have always been looking for a messiah,” he said. “We turned to Gareth for different reasons but he has been the one to take us forward.”

This might position Southgate quite neatly as the anti-messiah, yet it still leads to a certain amount of expectation. Glenn kept emphasising the need for consistency, mentioning that England ought to be reaching semi-finals more regularly if not winning tournaments in the near future, and it is a pressure the manager readily accepts.

“We’ve got an exciting group of players coming through, in some cases players who have actually won World Cups at youth level,” Southgate said. “One thing we always said to our junior teams is that we should strive to be in the later stages of tournaments, the finals if possible, because those are the games where you learn the most.

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“Having had experience at the highest level now I am even more convinced that these are the games that really matter, the ones where you grow. Croatia deserved to go through to the final in summer, we have to take our medicine on that, but I have had a couple of conversations with their coach since and we both agree that the more big games you play, the more you learn to handle the pressure so that eventually you will be able to get over the line.

“We are in a good position now, we don’t have to rip everything up and start again, we have made progress and we want to keep that progress going.”

Croatia crop up again on Friday as England’s next opponents in the Uefa Nations League, Luka Modric, Ivan Rakitic and all. Southgate would have liked a full stadium in Zagreb as the World Cup runners-up took the opportunity to remind England what happened in summer; instead, the game will be played behind closed doors in Rijeka as part of a clampdown on terrace racism in the past.

“It’s not ideal but the lads will still know they are playing for England,” Southgate said. “I would have preferred a bouncing stadium so that I could tell the players to go out and deal with it, but though we have a different sort of experience instead, the quality of the opponent is still really high so we will have enough of a challenge.”

Faced with a few midfield regulars out with injury for the games in Croatia and then, a week on Monday, in Spain, Southgate took the opportunity to bring in some new young faces, with Borussia Dortmund’s Jadon Sancho the most intriguing selection. Formerly on Manchester City’s books the 18‑year‑old, who was part of England’s Under-17 World Cup success last year, has prospered after moving to the Bundesliga to find playing time.

Sancho is already highly rated in Germany and probably ripe for a full England debut rather than merely an opportunity to gain experience with the seniors, though ahead of him is a young winger still at Manchester City. All Raheem Sterling has to do, according to Southgate, is to add goals to his game.

“Raheem’s level of performance has been good, all that is missing is the finishing,” the manager said. “If he had scored a couple in the summer everyone would be viewing his tournament in a much more positive way. He has started the season well with City and should feel good about what he is doing.

“There is no smooth path to the top and Raheem has had to overcome a few setbacks, but life in sport is about developing resilience.

“Defenders are frightened by speed, and that’s where Raheem, Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford give us another dimension.

“I particularly like the fact that Raheem works incredibly hard without the ball,” he added. “The days have gone when forwards would only turn it on with the ball at their feet, you have to work harder than that now.

“That’s what Borussia Dortmund demand, and so do Manchester City and Liverpool.”