Steve Holland has described the World Cup quarter-final against France as a "50-50 game" and hinted that England would try to nullify Kylian Mbappe's "super strengths" by forcing the forward onto the back foot.
The Three Lions assistant revealed that ex-Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho, his former mentor at Chelsea, had nullified Barcelona right-back Dani Alves by making the Brazilian defend against Cristiano Ronaldo - and suggested England would aim to do similar with Mbappe.
"There are a handful of players on the planet that you need to consider special attention to," Holland said. "[Lionel] Messi has been one and probably still is. You’d have to put Mbappe in that category. We do need to look at trying to avoid leaving ourselves in situations where he is as devastating as we’ve all seen.
"I remember having a conversation with Mourinho when he was with Real Madrid and they were playing Barcelona. Alves would be the right-back for Barcelona and flying forwards in attack, Mourinho would play a soldier against him to try to stop him but then of course you don’t get any threat from your team from the soldier as you’re just stopping somebody, you’re not actually hurting them.
"Then he would try to play Ronaldo against him, directly, one against one because Alves was fantastic going forwards but maybe not quite as good defensively as a consequence. There is always a plus and a minus.
"It’s that cat and mouse of, 'yes we have still got to try to deal with him' but we also have to try to exploit the weakness that his super strength delivers.
"Trying to adapt your team to cover for that whilst still trying to create your own problems is the challenge.
"We won’t just be looking to stop a player but we would be looking to try to do everything possible to limit his super strength whilst still trying to focus on our own strengths because we have good players, players just as likely to cause France trouble as Mbappe would be to us. We have to find that balance."
