Steve Holland apologises to England players for team-sheet blunder

The England assistant manager Steve Holland has apologised to the squad for inadvertently appearing to reveal Gareth Southgate’s proposed lineup for Sunday’s World Cup Group G fixture against Panama.

Holland had been photographed walking on to the training pitch for Thursday’s session at Spartak Zelenogorsk’s stadium clutching a sheet of paper upon which seemed to be written the starting XI for the game in Nizhny Novgorod. On it, Southgate’s first-choice selection, which included Marcus Rashford and Ruben Loftus-Cheek, appeared to be detailed in formation with each player’s understudy listed underneath.

Although the Football Association was apparently relaxed about the situation, the England defender Kyle Walker said that Holland had felt moved to address the squad before their session back in Zelenogorsk on Friday morning.

“It was just before training, just before we went out and did our warm-up,” he said. “He gave his apologies and said it was the first time he had messed up in 20 years, which we had a bit of a laugh about because his refereeing skills are not great. It was a bit of banter, we move on and are looking forward to the game now.”

Rashford and Loftus-Cheek are, indeed, expected to start against Panama despite Southgate suggesting the football his side had played in Volgograd was “as good as anything in the tournament so far”. The manager will confirm his lineup at Saturday’s training session. “From the type of training we do they will have a good idea and, clearly, we had a team that played very well and won,” he said. “We’re not going to differ wildly to that. We’re waiting to see if Dele Alli will be fit [after a thigh strain], which is looking unlikely because he’s not trained with the team yet. But he’s progressing really well so we won’t rule that out just yet.

“We obviously have competition for places, strength in depth, players that came off the bench and had an impact on the game the other day. I have to balance all those things out when I make a decision on the team. But to play with the freedom, the energy and the pace that we did [against Tunisia]was as good as anything I have seen in the tournament up to this point. The team performed as well as I can remember us playing with the ball in the first hour of the game. I don’t see us making too many changes to what we did.”

Asked about the images of Holland’s team-sheet, Southgate said: “It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. There’s a squad of 23 names on the sheet, the next sheet has different players in different positions because we swap people in and swap people out. The stories are then run as they are. For me, no drama, but obviously any time we were to give the opposition the opportunity of having our team is a disadvantage to us and so, of course, our media has to decide whether they want to help the team or not. But, given that was just a squad list, it doesn’t make any difference really.