England take on Ukraine in the quarter-final of the European Championship and some pundits in the UK have already urged Gareth Southgate to prepare for the semi-final.
If the English side win on Saturday they are going to face Denmark or the Czech Republic in the semis and since Ukraine are not one of the top sides, everyone is expecting the Three Lions to see this one through without too much fuss.
The manager has also be urged to rotate his starting line-up and particularly rest the players who are on yellow cards. Maguire, Kalvin Phillips, Declan Rice and Phil Foden are all one booking away from missing the semi-final which is why Gareth Southgate has been advised to play smart and not use these players in Rome.
But, speaking to the press, the manager has made it clear that he is not going to take this game and Ukraine lightly and will prepare his tactics in a very normal manner.
“No, I don’t really understand that rationale[of resting important players],” he said, as quoted by The Standard.
“I understand that strategically you might like to do that but I can’t think of a country in the world that would do that for a quarter-final and especially not a country that’s only ever been to three semi-finals in its history.
“So no, I think we’ve got to focus on tonight. It would be a big error for us to be thinking about anything else and it would be an insult to Ukraine as well. So we won’t make any decisions based on yellow cards.
“We did in the last group game because we knew we had qualified and we had the opportunity to protect Phil in because we weren’t sure what was going to happen further on.
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“But now we play to win and we’ve got to have everybody available.”
Is Gareth Southgate being naive?
There’s no doubt Ukraine are not going to lay down and let England walk all over them but at the same time, the English side are the heavy favourites with all the world-class talent they have in their squad.
And just to make sure he has every player available for selection for the semi-final, Gareth Southgate has to be practical plus bold and rotate his squad on Saturday.
Harry Maguire is perhaps the only player amongst the yellow-carded ones who should start but other than that, the manager has quality backups in every department.
We hope Southgate is bluffing and he will rest players like Rice and Foden on Saturday because Ukraine have every intention to stretch this game until penalties and the longer the game goes, the more chances there is that the England boss will miss one of his regular starters in the semi-final.