Gareth Southgate has promised a “different” England, with “different strategies”, after picking one of the boldest and youngest squads in both Euro 2024 and the national team’s history. With 12 players picked for their first ever tournament, the manager took the ruthless decision to cut “devastated” Manchester City playmaker Jack Grealish. Southgate admitted this was one of his most difficult tournament squads to pick, especially as it involved letting down so many stalwarts. Harry Maguire also misses out due to a calf injury, which has only meant further inexperience in defensive positions.
“There’s some disappointment today but there’ll be a lot of excitement about players we’ve selected and to see some of the players who mean we’ve got a different look about us in terms of how we play, and I think people will be captivated by that,” Southgate said, “As I’ve said, I’m trying to conduct myself respectfully because of the players who have gone today. But equally I’m hugely excited about the squad we’ve picked.”
When asked about the loss of Maguire at set-pieces, Southgate replied: “We’ll be different, we’ll have to find different strategies, different ways of working, Harry’s consistently been one of our main first contacts from set-plays but we have got other options within that, but we have got other opportunities to be creative in our set-plays as well.”
Southgate’s decision on Grealish ultimately came down to the fitness of other players, particularly Newcastle United’s Anthony Gordon. Once the England staff had sufficient information on Thursday morning, however, it was decided not to extend the situation much longer. The squad announcement had initially been planned for Saturday, but Southgate felt it was fairer to the players to do it sooner. It was why James Maddison had been informed the night before.
“I spoke to some of the boys last night and some today. As early as we were able to once we had made decisions. Once we had made clear decisions we tried to make those decisions as quickly as we could really.
“There were one or two injury things that we had to confirm through training just to be certain. As I said I tried to tell them all as early as I could. I knew exactly last night where we were with James [Maddison] and didn’t want him to be hanging on and training when I knew I could tell him. I couldn’t do that with Jack until this morning…”
When asked about Grealish’s wider form, Southgate said: “I don’t think today would be a good day to talk about the bigger picture. I don’t think that would be fair. I have just delivered a really difficult conversation to a lad who is devastated. I think the world of him as a kid. Yes. I am not going to go any broader than that.”
Southgate said that there was a feeling of disappointment around the squad on Thursday, but that he planned to get all the staff together that evening to talk through and also draw a line for the tournament going forward.
“Firstly that gives us the focus for the game [against Iceland on Friday] and then when everybody comes back on Sunday night or Monday we can really start to think about the tournament.”
Southgate played down the relative youth of the squad, despite half the picks for the backline facing their first tournament. That only puts greater importance on Harry Kane as a senior figure. While the selection of both Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney has raised questions on the Bayern Munich striker’s fitness, given he has barely played since May, Southgate insisted that wasn’t part of it.
“No… I think we’re conscious that, with 26, if you had a problem with Harry, then to only have one alternative, you could run into trouble, and the two guys give very different styles of play, different attributes, similar to the sort of seven, 10, 11 positions behind, we wanted different profiles, we had the opportunity to take the numbers to do that, so we thought they were good options to have.
“There’s no doubt that the senior boys who have gone today are big characters but we still have big characters and we have guys who are going to emerge in the coming weeks.”
Friday night’s match against Iceland will now be the team’s send-off, and Southgate confirmed that Aaron Ramsdale will start.
“There are clearly relationships that you want to build. There are decisions we are making on who plays when because there are some players who reported later than others so some needed the first game and we needed to get others into the second game. There is still a mix. Some are still not quite ready to start. It is not quite as simple as just playing the team for Serbia and we still have a week to work that out.”