Southgate: Keep standards up and sort out dirty socks

Gareth Southgate gathered his England players for a team meeting to remind them to keep standards high and their dirty socks in check following Germany’s elimination from the World Cup.

Captain Harry Kane and some of England’s other senior players also spoke at the meeting about the need not to take anything for granted

after watching Germany and Belgium suffer World Cup shocks.

England face Senegal in the last 16 tomorrow and the eliminations of Germany and Belgium in the group stage prompted Southgate to remind his players they must not get sloppy. Southgate’s team are the favourites to get past Senegal and book a quarter-final place, but the England manager is clearly making no assumptions and there was another surprise yesterday, with Uruguay being eliminated.

During a team meeting, Southgate told his players to maintain high standards on and off the pitch, which includes turning their dirty socks the right way around to be washed, putting their kit in the right place after training and not being late for meetings or meals.

Defender John Stones

said: “We spoke briefly in our meeting this morning as a team about not letting any standards drop. It was the manager, Harry [Kane] and a few of the boys spoke up. Whether it might be putting your kit the right way for the kit men, putting out socks the right way for the kit men – we get on at each other for things like that because we have created those standards. Those little things matter and those

little things keep you on the right path. So we spoke about what has happened and about the big nations that have gone – that can’t be ourselves and that goes with all the little things that we have been doing, all the good traits we have. We can’t let those slide and we have to make sure we stay focused on the job in hand.”

As well as keeping standards high off the pitch, England will not leave anything to chance on it and are now practising penalties against goalkeepers to be ready for the possibility of a shoot-out.

While Stones said an order for takers had not yet been communicated to the players, it is understood Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka, who missed from the spot in the final of the European Championship last year, are in line to take penalties if they are on the pitch and England are involved in a shoot-out.

Asked to expand on the standards England set off the pitch that help the team be at their best on it,

Stones added: “I really think it’s the small things. For your team-mates, not being late to meetings.

“If you start getting sloppy with the little things, the bigger things start to get sloppy very easily. So I think it was just a quiet reminder that we need to keep our standards and be conscious of those as well.

“It’s about being together and picking someone up when they’ve let something slide a bit, or not realised they’ve let something slide, and having that unity.”