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There is no doubt that Mason Greenwood meets the criteria of those fueling Gareth Southgate’s optimism for the 2022 World Cup. “We have some very exciting forwards, many of whom are not yet the finished article,” said the England manager by announcing his squad for the final round of the qualifiers on Thursday and, with that, a contradiction at the heart of the Manchester United striker’s omission.
For England to take the next – and most difficult – step from finalist to winner, Southgate explained, the young players at their disposal need to gain more experience before they arrive in Qatar. He found it hard to say that qualifying is not guaranteed, despite a 100% start to the qualifying campaign.
Greenwood, however, will spend the international break training with what remains of Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s squad at Carrington rather than adding to his lone cap in England against Hungary, Andorra or Poland. He will also not appear for the Under-21s this week under new manager Lee Carsley after Southgate decided it was not necessary for the 19-year-old’s development.
Greenwood, if he wishes, remains eligible to change international allegiance to Jamaica given he is under 21 and has made less than three senior competitive appearances for England. But Southgate is not afraid of losing the gifted striker to the Reggae Boyz and, after laying out his plans to the teenager, his family and United, believes the path for Greenwood is clear and open.
“Normally I don’t get involved with the Under-21s, but he’s beyond that,” Southgate said. “I want to take a little more control over its international development. Dual nationality is a bit of a red herring. He 100% wants to play for England and there is no suggestion that there is anything else there.
Southgate has naturally remained closely linked with the squad which reached England’s first major final in 55 years for the triple World Cup qualifying title, although Patrick Bamford, without selection, was rewarded for his good looks. form for Leeds by a summons. With 14 months to go to the World Cup finals, time and competitive opportunities are limited to find the improvement which the manager believes is needed for better teams such as Italy and France on the bigger scene.
“We want to constantly evolve and this is part of [the] younger players get more experiences, ”Southgate said. “In the bigger games, keeping possession under this intense pressure is something we think we can definitely be better at.
“One of the difficulties is that you don’t always have this type of game between these big tournaments.
“We will definitely have tough matches, different kinds of challenges, but if we can do well in qualifying for Qatar, it’s important that the matches we have after that, their level asks those kinds of questions.
“That’s why we really enjoyed the Nations League, because even though people question the extra competition, as I understand it, the level of the matches has been good for us. Playing Belgium twice last fall and Denmark we learned a lot from these games and you want this level of opponent as regularly as possible to improve the level of your own team.
“We can talk to the team about the decision-making at times, but there’s also an element that there are certain types of players in certain positions that we don’t have. Therefore, we must play on our strengths and capabilities.
“When we play a game like against Italy, people are always going to showcase their two midfielders [Jorginho and Marco Verratti] and say that’s the way to go. But if you don’t have that type of player, you have to play differently. France didn’t have that type of player and won it in a different way. We must be the same. We need to make the most of the assets we have and not worry about what we don’t have.
Southgate intends to talk to Tyrone Mings about the doubts the Aston Villa defender had before the Euro opener against Croatia, when he replaced injured Harry Maguire. Mings later admitted that his mental health was suffering due to the belief that “90-95% of your country has doubts about you.”
The defender’s performance at the European Championship, according to Southgate, had to banish any reservations. “I saw the article. I think there is a balance, which is why I like the term “mental fitness” as much as I like sanity.
“With mental health, people immediately think of the more clinical areas and sometimes there can be performance anxiety, which seems to be what Tyrone was referring to when talking about the build-up of that first game and the doubts he might have felt on the outside as to whether he could cope.
“I felt him leading this first game and spoke to him a few times this week. We were very confident he could do it and he performed exceptionally well.
“I’m sure he took enormous confidence from the way he played in the tournament, not having known European club football in the past or experienced tournament football at this level of control.
“I thought he was doing exceptionally well. This is something that I will take up with him when we get together, just to clarify, but that seemed like the area he was talking about. When we talk about mental health, there are a lot of different areas and different feelings that people have along this spectrum. “
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