Scotland friendly is a game Gareth Southgate cannot afford to lose

There are milestones in the oldest fixture and the oldest border skirmish in world football that have marked Gareth Southgate’s career as first a player and a manager. Tuesday night is set to be another.

England will face Scotland for the 116th time, since their first meeting in 1872, and while it is only a rare friendly in these days of a congested competitive calendar, it is also an encounter that Southgate knows must be taken with deadly seriousness.

While he will argue, with justification, that is always the case with England, it is not a game that he can afford to lose given the need for momentum as he begins to prepare for next summer’s European Championship and the relevance of moving on from Saturday’s flat 1-1 draw with Ukraine with something far more convincing.

That may sound peculiar when the undoubted progress England have made under Southgate is considered, but defeat will be a result that has a deep resonance, maybe even an embarrassment, before the next international get-together in October.

“The stories are handed down and the history is handed down,” Southgate said when asked whether facing Scotland really did still chime with the current generation of England players. He does not want a loss on his watch, then.

Certainly, that is the case for Southgate. Whether it is eventually jovially recognising the “error of his ways” when he supported Scotland as a seven-year-old child at the 1978 World Cup – after England again failed to qualify – or facing them as a player at Euro 96, or on the bench at the play-off in 1999 to reach the subsequent tournament, or pitting himself against them as a manager, Southgate knows it can be a defining game.

“They were like every England v Scotland game – really intense encounters,” the former defender said of that play-off 24 years ago which was won 2-1 on aggregate despite a 1-0 second-leg defeat at Wembley – the last time Scotland won – as he talked about how even an old, gnarled coach such as Arthur Cox lost his head in celebrating Paul Scholes’s crucial second goal.

You were in the last England side that lost to Scotland, Southgate, who started the Wembley game, was asked. “We won the tie though, didn’t we?” he shot back quickly in a response that revealed how much it means to him.

The fixture has been even more important in Southgate’s managerial career. This will be the fourth meeting since he took over and the previous three, all competitive ties, have also had meaning and significant repercussions.

In November 2016, England won 3-0 in a World Cup qualifier – their biggest margin of victory between the two nations for 41 years – which sealed Southgate’s appointment as the permanent England manager. Five days later that was confirmed, even if the performance was unconvincing and highlighted the crushing lack of confidence at that time.

Then, the following June, England salvaged a 2-2 draw at Hampden Park after two free-kicks from Leigh Griffiths within the space of three minutes late on appeared set to give Scotland their first 21st-century win over the country they delight most in defeating. Harry Kane’s predatory 93rd-minute goal earned a point and it was another lesson in England moving on from the paralysis by fear that gripped them in the Euro 2016 debacle against Iceland and finally showing some backbone.

“I can certainly see the picture as they were curling it because I was stood right behind it… the roof lifted off the place,” Southgate said of Griffiths’s second goal – in the 90th minute – and it sounded like the recall of a nightmare. It undoubtedly affected him. As did his side’s positive response.

At the last Euros, there was the bruising goalless draw at Wembley which provoked accusations that familiar anxieties were returning as Southgate selected the youngest England team ever fielded at a tournament. He had to adapt to reach the final and has learnt the need for experience.

And so what now? The unique circumstances the game provides  must be regarded as an opportunity. Scotland are arguably the form team in Europe – who would ever have expected that? – and will become the first to qualify for the Euros should Norway fail to beat Georgia at the same time as tonight’s game unfolds, and Southgate said he needs to be “bold”. “We have got to be strong because they are a good team and we are coming into an environment where you have got to have the personality to play,” he said. “But we do want to find some things out as well.”

England absolutely need to impose themselves, especially if they are to be regarded – as they must be – as the favourites to win the Euros, and so anything short of a victory will feel deeply unsatisfactory. Even though it is a friendly, that is a fact.

This will be Southgate’s 87th match as England manager, only the 18th which is not a competitive fixture – he reiterated that his win ratio is not a big deal for him – and the first since the 3-0 win over Ivory Coast in March 2022. But it is, in all but name, a competitive fixture even if there are no points to be won. England and Southgate know that. They know the history, the significance, the meaning and how it can be another milestone. For good and bad. Otherwise they should not have taken the game.