Gareth Southgate warns England players that match fitness will be key to making his 23-man squad

Witness the fitness | Southgate says players must be ready for a ‘test of physical endurance’
Marc Atkins/Getty Images
James Olley19 November 2019

Gareth Southgate believes England must be ready for a battle of endurance at Euro 2020 and warned players on the periphery that match fitness will be paramount to make his 23-man squad.

England will learn more about their group stage opponents next summer when the draw takes place in Bucharest on November 30 after rounding off their qualification campaign with Sunday’s 4-0 win in Kosovo.

The Football Association will then finalise two March friendlies against leading nations before two away games in June on the eve of the tournament.

Southgate will not organise a gathering during the four-month hiatus until the next international break but those struggling for regular game-time at their clubs – including Tottenham’s Harry Winks and Liverpool’s Joe Gomez – were sent a clear message that continuing omission from the biggest matches will count against them for England.

“There will be such a big volume of matches with those clubs, in particular, with the Champions League clubs in particular, so, I think they’re going to get their football,” explained Southgate.

“The key will be how be how many of the big matches they can play in, which determines a little bit the evidence that you can see of their form and their ability to perform under pressure.

“As you get closer to the summer, their physical capabilities and match sharpness [will be important] because we have a shorter preparation period at the end of the season than we had for the World Cup and, like I said before the last tournament, you’re not going to find your fitness in a tournament. History tells me that doesn’t really happen.

“So, you might take a risk on one or two players in the knowledge that there’s going to be a limit to how many minutes they can provide but one of the big things we learned from the World Cup was that seven games was a test of physical endurance as well as anything else. “We didn’t know that before because we’d never got there [to those stages]! So, that’s the learning we haven’t got to wait for and experience this time but it does re-emphasise the physical demands of the tournament.

In Pictures | Kosovo vs England | 17/11/2019

1/25

“By the time Croatia and France got together [for the World Cup Final], it was like ‘who’s still standing in the boxing gym and are you able to go again?’

“It’s unique in that respect because each game gets tougher and the recovery time gets shorter, so it’s actually a higher physical demand than I thought.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in