By George Aluo
England’s manager, Gareth Southgate has declared that he is starting the Euro 2020 campaign a happy man given the quality and form of his strike-force ahead of the tournament.
The Three Lions are billed to start the campaign at home in Wembley against Croatia on Sunday in a game they need to win to boost their confidence in the tournament in which they are amongst the favourites to win.
Southgate who spoke after his side’s 1-0 victory over Romania in their last warm-up game at the Riverside Stadium said the only challenge for him now is to find the right balance on how to deploy the army of in-form strikers.
England had before beating Romania also secured a win over Austria in what appears to be an excellent build-up to Euro 2020.
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A look at England’s squad shows that strikers like Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish, Phil Foden, Chelsea’s Mason Mount, Man City’s Raheem Sterling, Man United’s Rashford, Jadon Sancho, Everton’s Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka are all in deadly form.
“It’s definitely going to be difficult to fit all of them in!” Southgate said, even as he pointed out that Grealish in particular has got the quality to “turn matches”.
Continuing Southgate said…”I was talking to someone outside about [World Cup] 1998. I’m pretty certain David Beckham didn’t start the first game, I know Michael Owen didn’t and by the end of the tournament, Michael Owen was a world superstar.
“Those changes happen. We need changes from the bench and we’re fortunate to have players who can do that now. Chelsea just won the Champions League playing with three [attackers], really. We’ve got to find the right balance, find the players in form, the players we think are our best players for different games. But we’re going to need them all. The players who start game one, there’ll be changes during the games.”
In the defence, Southgate is also not losing sleep over the injury that has ruled out Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold from the tournament, as several other players have shown signs they are ready to step in. One of them being Southampton’s midfielder James Ward-Prowse who did a yeoman’s job in the friendly against Romania.
It would be noted that England has never won the tournament that has Portugal as defending champions. Ronaldo led Portugal to lift the coveted trophy in 2016 after beating hosts, France in the final by 1-0 after extra time.
