Southgate promises massive changes ahead of Ivory Coast friendly

 

England manager Gareth Southgate has revealed that the Three Lions will look more different than the team that faced Switzerland a few days ago.

England defeated Switzerland 2-1 at the Wembley Stadium on Saturday with Luke Shaw’s first-half strike and Harry Kane’s second-half penalty securing a comeback win after Breel Embolo’s first-half opener.

The Three Lions manager explained the rationale behind starting different players from the ones that played on Saturday as a need to get the whole squad involved.

“We’ll make changes. We think that’s the right thing to do, We want to keep all of the squad involved. I think that has been a strength for us. Players who come in perform well at the level, and the team march on. They need to feel that we’ve got the confidence in them to go into any game, and we’re also at a stage of the season where their load is heavy, and we’ve got to make sure we try and navigate that in the best way possible.” Southgate said.

England is one of the teams that have secured qualification for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Meanwhile, Ivory Coast would hope to improve on its 2-1 defeat to France in their last international where Arsenal striker Nicolas Pepe opened the scoring before France pulled back through Giroud and Tchouameni to win.

The elephants who failed to get to the semifinals of the African Cup of Nations in Cameroon in January after losing to Egypt are also out of the FIFA World Cup.

In other friendly matches on Tuesday, Austria will play Scotland, Belgium, and Burkina Faso, Isreal will also battle Romania.

The biggest game will see Netherlands play Germany while Wales play Czech Republic and France against South Africa.

 

Written by: Daniel Ademiju Idowu