The Three Lions boss believes his relatively inexperienced side may have struggled to compete at a tournament this year
England manager Gareth Southgate has declared his side are ‘better off’ after Euro 2020 was delayed until next year.
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the tournament has been pushed back to June 2021 with the Three Lions drawn in Group D alongside Croatia, Scotland and Czech Republic.
Since international football resumed this year, England have enjoyed mixed results and most recently bounced back from a 2-0 defeat against Belgium to smash Iceland 4-0 in the Nations League.
That big win saw Manchester City prodigy Phil Foden highlight his potentially bright future at international level and Southgate believes his relatively young side will be more ready to compete at Euro 2020 next year.
“We’ve got this strange split where half of the squad from Russia have drifted away really,” Southgate said.
“They’re not playing with their clubs or have retired from international football so we’ve got a lot of guys who were the base of the team against Iceland – [Kieran] Trippier, [Kyle] Walker, [Eric] Dier, [Harry] Maguire, [Jordan] Pickford – who have good experiences and have started to build a lot of caps.
“But then we have this younger group who are really innocent at international level in terms of the number of caps and experiences and a lot of them are so young as well.
“We’ve got to keep improving and they’ve got to learn from all the experiences they’ve had but I think we are definitely in a better place than we would have been after last autumn because those games weren’t the challenge we needed to improve.
“This autumn’s games have and so we’ll be better placed for next summer, whether we will be far enough ahead only time is going to tell. But we feel happier about the depth we’ve got from last Autumn, we feel very excited about the young players coming through and that is going to be for now but even more so two, four, six years time. We think England are in a good position for the future.
“And we’re looking forward to working with everyone in March to see what we can progress then.”
England are currently scheduled to play two World Cup qualifiers in March 2021 before Euro 2020 kicks off in June.
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