England host Switzerland tomorrow night in their first friendly of this international break.
Bukayo Saka has had to withdraw from the squad after recording a positive COVID-19 test.
“It was shame to lose Bukayo but we are back in those moments again where this is a spike again [in covid cases],” explained Gareth Southgate.
Emile Smith Rowe missed out today in training and will be unlikely to feature tomorrow but Raheem Sterling is “fine.”
Fraser Forster has earned a recall back into the England squad after Sam Johnstone was forced to withdraw. The 34-year-old’s last Three Lions cap came in a 2-1 win over Australia in May 2016.
With Marc Gurhi earing his first call up in a young squad, Southgate explained how he’s settled in.
“With Marc and the others young lads like Connor [Gallagher], we’re seeing what they’re doing with their clubs on the training pitch, but now they have to take it from the training pitch onto the pitch tomorrow.”
The 2022 World Cup has drawn up a lot of criticism due to the poor human rights records, but Southgate says there are no plans to Boycott the event.
“I really know what that achieves [boycotting]. It would of course be a big story, but it [The World Cup] would still go ahead and the fact is unfortunately the biggest issue that is non religious and non cultural is what happened with the building of the stadiums and there’s nothing we can do about that either sadly.
“Nobody is in disagreement about the things that are happening and the things that unacceptable. There are conversations going on all the time in the background and it would be wrong to say we are pushing things to one side.
“We’ve been briefed this week on the issues over there which is really important. For us as a team we are digesting that and coming up with ideas that we’d like to go moving forward. It is an opportunity to shine a light on the issues. We are speaking as a team but we don’t want to rush into anything.”
