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Gareth Southgate gave the nation a harsh comparison to reality and claimed England are not yet ready to win the Euro.
After a deluge of criticism following the goalless draw against Scotland, Southgate said England are still in the works and lack the capacity to compete with powerful favorites France or Portugal.
The toothless performance against Scotland has now left Three Lions needing a win over the Czech Republic at Wembley on Tuesday to finish top of Group D.
England’s place in the last 16 is almost assured – but after the way his stars played against Auld Enemy Southgate has come under a barrage of criticism that has rocked him.
Gareth Southgate has suggested England should not be considered among the favorites for the Euro (Image: GETTY)
And in defending its stars, Southgate has sought to downplay expectations – pouring a bucket of cold water on hopes of a first tournament victory since 1966.
After failing in almost every department against the supercharged Scots, it’s clear, but Southgate thinks it’s unfair to put its tournament rookies in the same range as more experienced rivals.
I think I said before that some teams are at a different stage in their development.
Italy have had 28 or 29 unbeaten games and we know what France and Portugal have been up to in recent years and Belgium has been the No.1 team in the world for four years.
So that’s the level. This is the standard we must aspire to, says the leader of the Three Lions.
We are a work in progress. The first step is to qualify in the group and then we go into the next phase.
But at the moment we have to make a success of the game against the Czech Republic.
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And with criticism mounting on the captain who missed the shot, Harry Kane Southgate believes he should be blamed for the tasteless Scotland failing to attract the Tottenham star.
I always look at myself first and at the end when you have a result like that I understand that there are going to be criticisms.
The important thing is that everyone should line up behind the players and they will need to feel that support and that warmth.
It’s a relatively inexperienced group, I think the third least capped of the tournament. We played a young team against Scotland so it’s a different experience for a lot of them than they’ve all been through before.
They almost survived it. We want to be better and that’s what was going to happen in the next few days before playing against the Czech Republic.
In terms of Harry and performance, the center forwards also end up relying on service from the team.
We have to make sure every aspect of the team, the game and the performance is correct and we couldn’t do it, so Harry couldn’t do it either.
Southgate defended Kane’s crash in the 74th minute but gave no indication he would drop the Golden Boot winner who has scored 35 games for club and country since the start of the season.
It’s always difficult when he’s your captain because he’s a player we’ve never had to take off in the past and of course in his club you leave him in all circumstances.
England will look to do much better against the Czech Republic on Tuesday (Image: GETTY)
But we were trying to pose a different problem and we were up against a solid defense.
The first solution didn’t work and we also have a bench like the one we have, so it was important to try another way.
Southgate is under pressure to make changes against the Czechs and he admits he is ready to release Borussia Dortmund star Jadon Sancho on the Euro.
We have explosive options and a lot of them are young players and are experiencing a great tournament for the first time.
Jadon is in this mix. He’s been training well the last few days and of course we have these options and decisions to make.
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