England 's players held a crisis meeting without manager Gareth Southgate ahead of their morale-boosting 3-3 draw at home to Germany on Monday - and the Three Lions boss is all for it.
Coming from 2-0 down to avoid losing their third successive game thanks to goals from Luke Shaw, Mason Mount and Harry Kane, England took a step towards remedying their abysmal run of form and responded to mounting pressure in the lead-up to this winter's World Cup.
Having already been relegated to the second tier of the Nations League last week following a limp 1-0 loss away to Italy, Southgate's stars got together at St George's Park for an honest sit-down without their under-fire manager.
Happy to admit that sometimes a scenario in which the players take things into their own hands can spell bad news for a boss in football, the England gaffer was still pleased that his squad demonstrated that they're ready to hold difficult conversations between themselves ahead of a crucial World Cup campaign in just two months' time.
"One of the things was they asked could they have a meeting on their own to talk things through. That was, for me, such a positive sign," Southgate explained after the thrilling 3-3 draw at Wembley. "By the way, there's moments at some clubs where that's not a good sign!
"But they kind of talked through what they wanted to do with me. The best football teams, of course, need outstanding leadership from coaching teams and everything else, but the best teams have a real core of players that drive things."
The Three Lions boss also believes that his players have "grown" during a miserable 2022 on the international front. England have failed to win any of their six competitive fixtures since last November, including humiliating defeats to Hungary both home and away.
With their first World Cup group game against Iran now less than eight weeks away, Southgate hopes that England's recent struggles can help them be hardened for battle in Qatar. "It has been a tough period and they have grown," he went on to declare post-match.
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"You will always face pressure and at some point you have to be exposed. We played a friendly against Ivory Coast in March and they went to 10 men and it became a non-event and we learnt nothing, this week we have learned a huge amount. As a group they have come together and they will benefit in the long run."
Southgate added: "I've got to say the players have been fantastic the last few days. They've taken some individual responsibility. They've collectively talked as a group on their own, with us, and the whole experience has been one we needed, I think, to grow the next part as a team because you're going to have pressure in a World Cup.
"You can try and avoid pressure but it's coming. Maybe it's the third group game, maybe it's a quarter-final - whatever it might be, it's coming. So, better that we feel it and we learn how to deal with it."
