Gareth Southgate has challenged his fringe players to seize a rare opportunity to impress against Australia — and warned they may not get another chance for England if they not do perform.
The England manager is expected to name an experimental side for the Wembley friendly, with Levi Colwill and Eddie Nketiah potentially in line for debuts and Jarrod Bowen, James Maddison and Ollie Watkins vying to make an impression.
“We want to see as many of the squad as we can this week,” said Southgate, whose side could qualify for next summer’s European Championship with a win over Italy back at Wembley on Tuesday. “There is a reality with England that you have to take your chances when they come.
“As a former player, you knew the moments when you felt, ‘OK, I have got to deliver tonight. I am not going to get six or 10 chances.’ It is not how it works.
“Our job is to try and alleviate pressure from the team but you have to deliver with England and we have to win matches, so we have got to be good at handling and coping with pressure. These boys are more than capable.
“There is no question in my mind. They are fighting against good players and they are younger and less experienced than some of the others.
“Colwill and Nketiah, for example, we would not have picked them if we did not think they could not be part of England’s future.
“They have got to take it step by step and try to go out and give the best version of themselves.”
Australia lack the quality of their ‘Golden Generation’ of the early 2000s, which beat England at Upton Park in 2003, but Southgate is conscious that Graham Arnold’s side, making their first visit to Wembley, will be enormously motivated.
“We’ve talked to the players about the England-Australia sporting rivalry,” he said. “I played with a lot of Aussies and when they beat us at Upton Park, they were pretty quick to come back to Middlesbrough (where Southgate was playing) and [Mark] Schwarzer had a blow-up kangeroo under his arm and he was making hay with it all. There’s plenty of rivalry going on.”
Both sets of players will wear black armbands and there will be a period of silence held before kick off to remember the victims of the events in Israel and Palestine.
There were talks over illuminating the Wembley arch in Israeli colours but in a meeting of FA officials on Wednesday, it was decided the move could be divisive and be seen as taking sides in the Middle East conflict.
Asked his view on the FA’s stance, Southgate said: “My first thoughts are extreme sadness for anybody who has lost loved ones in the attacks that have happened. In my lifetime, the Middle East has been probably the most complex and difficult situation to fully understand [and] be able to comment upon with any sense of authority.
‘So the FA will have wanted to consult as many people as it could, try and get the right position and they will have wanted to remain inclusive.
“I have friends in the Jewish community and the Muslim community. It is impossible for me to fully understand what it is like for people in either of those communities. I have not walked in their shoes. The FA will have tried to do the right thing,”
