For Gareth Southgate, the moment of jeopardy at the World Cup draw came when Lothar Matthäus reached for the second ball from pot two. England were already installed in Group B and everybody knew that the former Germany captain could pull out his own nation to make things pretty spicy.
Southgate had to feel scrambled. His mid-afternoon flight from Heathrow on Thursday had been delayed by eight hours, which meant he landed in Doha at 8.30am on Friday, “which was fine because my first meeting wasn’t until nine o’clock,” the England manager said with a smile. Now he could feel a note of real tension. And then it passed because Matthäus unfurled a slip bearing the name of the United States.
