England manager Gareth Southgate has revealed ahead of England’s league clash with Germany at the Allianz Arena that Germany and Brazil are the benchmarks when it comes to international football tournaments.
Brazil and Germany have won a total of 9 FIFA World Cups between them with Brazil winning 5, the most by any country in the Tournaments history and Germany has also won four World Cups with their latest trump coming in 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
England will be seeking to record their first away win against Germany in a competitive match. the last time the two teams met, England defeated Germany to progress to the quarter-finals of the Euro 2020 Championship.
The three lions saw their 21 unbeaten runs brought to an end when they were defeated by Hungary in their opening game of the Nations League. Germany on the other hand is unbeaten in their last 10 matches since Hens Flick took over from his former boss Joachim Low.
What did Gareth Southgate say about Germany?
Speaking ahead of the match, Southgate said“’For me, Germany and Brazil are still the benchmarks in terms of countries that have regularly and consistently won tournaments,’ he said on the eve of the meeting at the Allianz Arena.
“In some respects, the result in the summer was overlooked, I’m not sure why – the quality of the Germany team was still very high, World Cup winners everywhere, Champions League winners everywhere, so really experienced at those big occasions.
“Even when everyone talks about the 5-1 here (in 2001), they ended up in the World Cup final on the back of that qualifying campaign.
“So, you have to respect what they’ve been as a country and what they are as a country in footballing terms.
“That mentality is what we’re trying to create – we’ve got to keep trying to get to the latter stages of competitions. Games like (Tuesday) are brilliant for us – that’s exactly the kind of test we need.”
The England Boss also reflected on his decision to pick Jardon Sancho, Marcos Rashdord, and Bukayo Saka to take the penalty against Italy in Euro 2020 Championship finals.
Gareth Southgate added: “When I left The Grove (hotel) that day I couldn’t help but feel, “Have I created this situation here for the boys?
“But it wouldn’t be right to not pick the players you think are best to take them because of what the possible consequences of them missing would be. I’ve got to pick them on the belief they are going to score.”
When quizzed if the racial abuse the players were subjected to will hunt that if they stand up to take Penalty at the World Cup, He responded: “We’re goosed, then!
“We’ve got 55 years of talking about penalties and everything else. So we’ve now got another layer that’s going to make it extremely difficult for us to win anything.
Gareth Southgate continued: “Indirectly, we have created another layer of difficulty in overcoming a penalty shootout. I have got to take all of those things into consideration and it is incredibly complex.”
