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England manager Gareth Southgate insists they are determined to finish the season on a positive note by claiming third place in the Uefa Nations League after the disappointment of the semi-final defeat by the Netherlands.
The hopes of a first trophy since the 1966 World Cup were extinguished in an error-strewn display in the 3-1 loss – now Southgate must lift spirits and an England side that looked jaded for what will be a low-key occasion against Switzerland in Guimaraes at 14:00 BST on Sunday.
Southgate, who will make changes with Ben Chilwell, Jordan Henderson and Marcus Rashford almost certainly out through injury, said: “It is very simple. This is an important international match.
“We lost an important game and we have got thousands of fans here and we need to make sure our performance gives something back and that we finish the season in the right manner.
“Every time we take the field we are learning things about the players, about how we like to play and how we improve – so this is a very important match.”
Southgate admitted there was a mood of disappointment in the England camp that the optimism they brought to Portugal for this inaugural Uefa Nations League was snuffed out after the loss to the Dutch in extra-time.
“The mood is as you’d expect after losing a semi-final,” said Southgate. “We know we are close to getting into finals and getting the opportunities to win trophies but we are not there yet.
“Everybody is disappointed with that throughout the camp but we have seen encouraging signs and it is clear the players are highly motivated.
“We know we have to be spot on in the way we prepare and the way we play and for us as a staff it is the same.”
Southgate insists that even though many may feel this play-off is now an unwanted fixture at the end of a gruelling 12 months for his squad, England will not be taking the game lightly.
“No England international is a practice match. Every time you wear the shirt there is importance for you, the country and the supporters,” said Southgate.
“Individuals have opportunities to impress to make sure their performances keep them involved in the squad. We want to finish the season on a good note with a healthy performance. A lot of aspects of our game the other night were very good.
“You could look at it from the perspective of us being only a couple of inches on a VAR decision from being in a final (when Jesse Lingard’s goal was ruled out) but it’s impossible to make as many mistakes as we did the other night and win big matches.
“We can’t correct those errors from the other night because they’ve gone but we can show we have made progress.”
Southgate insists the mistakes from John Stones and Ross Barkley, who were caught in possession in situations that led to goals, were not the fault of his philosophy in insisting England play out from the back.
He said: “We didn’t lose because of a philosophy of playing the ball out from the back. We lost because we made individual mistakes.”
And Southgate dismissed any similarities between the loss to the Netherlands and their semi-final defeat by Croatia in last summer’s World Cup, when England also led for a long period but then also lost in extra-time.
“It was a different game to that first semi-final against Croatia,” he said. “Here, we had a period at the start where we weren’t able to play through their press as well as we should but then we had a period where we did that well.
“At the beginning of the second half, we were on top with the ball, then they had a spell, but we finished the half again on top. They had a lot of possession without ever creating a clear chances. All their chances came from our mistakes. All of them.
“That was a bit of a different scenario to last summer against Croatia, where we felt we could have been tactically better and we stopped trying to play out. The errors we made the other night were errors of decision making not because we were trying to play out from the back.”
‘Swiss will have to be perfect’
Switzerland coach Vladimir Petkovic believes his team will have to be faultless to beat England, regardless of the starting XI Southgate picks for their third-place game.
“We need to be perfect against opponents like Portugal and England to win these kind of matches,” he said.
“It is the players that they (England) have at their disposal. I assume they may also make some changes to their starting line-up tomorrow as they have 23 players that are on an equal level.
“They are quite dangerous in the final third of the pitch, very fast, quite aggressive but they also have moments where they are in trouble and we were able to show that in the friendly match against them last year.”
The Swiss lost their semi-final to Portugal 3-1, with Cristiano Ronaldo scoring a hat-trick in Porto.
MATCH FACTS
Head-to-head
- This will be the 26th international meeting between England and Switzerland – England have won 17 of the previous 25 (W17 D5 L3).
- England last faced Switzerland on neutral venue in June 2004 at the European Championships, winning 3-0 in Portugal; the Three Lions have never lost against the Swiss at a neutral venue (W2 D1 L0).
- Switzerland won two of their first three meetings with England between 1933 and 1947 (W2 D0 L1) – since then, they’ve won once in 22 attempts (W1 D5 L16), a 2-1 win in a World Cup qualifier in Basel in May 1981.
England
- Against the Netherlands, England conceded three goals for only the second time in the last 79 internationals (2-3 v France in June 2017). The Three Lions last conceded three times in back-to-back games in June 1995 against Sweden (3-3) and Brazil (1-3).
- England named a starting XI with an average age of 24 years and 156 days against the Netherlands, the 10th time in the last 23 games their line-up average age has been aged under 25 – this happened in just 10 of the previous 606 matches.
- In the 1-3 defeat by the Netherlands, England faced 29 shots – the most they’ve faced in an international match since June 2013 against Brazil (32) and most in a competitive international since June 2012 against Italy (36).
- England have scored each of the last 21 penalties they’ve taken in competitive international matches – the last player to fail to score was David Beckham at Euro 2004.
Switzerland
- Switzerland have lost five of their last 10 matches (W4 D1 L5) having lost just one of their previous 25 games (W17 D7 L1).
- Switzerland defender Ricardo Rodriguez scored his seventh international goal in the 1-3 defeat by Portugal – five of his seven goals have been scored from the penalty spot.
- Switzerland have kept two clean sheets in their last 13 matches – they had kept 11 in their 14 games prior to this run.
