Gareth Southgate has challenged his England players to make more World Cup “history” against France.
England face the world champions in Saturday’s quarter-final acutely aware they have never beaten another elite nation on foreign soil in the knockout stages. Three Lions boss Southgate has broken down huge barriers in his reign after leading England to their first penalty shootout win in 22 years on the way to the World Cup semi-final in 2018.
They also reached their first major final since 1966 when they reached the Euros final last year, and have got their eyes on getting over their latest hurdle. Southgate said: “We’ve made quite a bit of history over the last four-and-a-half years. Not all of it good! But that’s the great challenge.
“When you go back through those tournaments, you do see the teams that have knocked England out. We haven’t been able to do that, so that’s the next test for this team.”
England have lost to the likes of Germany, Argentina and Brazil in their last few World Cup exits and they will have to beat France, who are the reigning champions, to reach the semi-finals in Qatar.
France also possess arguably the best player at the tournament in Kylian Mbappe, who has scored five goals in the Middle East and netted 16 times in his last 14 internationals.
But Southgate says he can see the belief growing in his players and they are gaining confidence with each win that they can go one step further than the semi-finals in Russia.
Southgate added: “You can see the belief growing because there is a lot of experience of these moments and they know that they’ve had to win games in different ways, they’ve had to come from behind in big matches.
“What we’ve talked about was keeping the relentless pressure going, not sitting back when we were ahead, making sure that we kept the intensity of our game. So we’ve got to do that now against the world champions.”
