Essential Football: England’s final World Cup warm-up, questions for Southgate, Nations League relegation?
The Sky Sports Football Podcast
Sky Sports
4 • 718 Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2022
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ron Walker and Peter Smith are joined by Sky Sports News’ Rob Dorsett to discuss how much the pressure has risen on Gareth Southgate in 14 short months since the Euro 2022 final, where his biggest squad headaches are and how he approaches the two Nations League matches, with a number of his first-choice players not featuring for their clubs.
Sky Sports digital football writers Adam Bate and Sam Blitz then join the party with their England XIs as we debate who should be in Southgate’s line-up to face Iran in two months time.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Sky Sports Football Podcast brought to you by Bet365, |
| 0:04.6 | where every nail-biting nil-nil, every bizarre VAR, every foregone conclusion, |
| 0:09.9 | bad pass, slam dunk, tap-in, false start, dead heat, |
| 0:14.1 | and absolutely expected defeat is amazing. |
| 0:17.7 | From football to tennis and ice hockey to motorsport, |
| 0:20.8 | whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet-365. amazing, from football to tennis and ice hockey to motorsport. |
| 0:25.1 | Whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. |
| 0:41.2 | Hello and welcome to Essential Football, where we're putting the Premier League on hold for a fortnight for the final international break before the World Cup. |
| 0:50.6 | England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all in action over the next few days with the former two preparing for their opening games in Qatar, which, as we record this, are two months away to the day. |
| 0:55.4 | I'm Ron Walker and I'm joined by senior football writer and our England man, Pete Smith, who'll be heading off to Wembley on Monday night to see the three lines play in their |
| 0:59.7 | final home game before the tournament. Pete, is this feeling excitement or nervousness, |
| 1:05.6 | given the general consensus around England at the moment? |
| 1:09.5 | Hi, Ron. Yeah. |
| 1:15.1 | I think it could go either way, couldn't it really? |
| 1:20.9 | At the moment, I'm a little bit unsure about which way it will go, because if England could somehow come up with a couple of results, a couple of wins in these games, then I think it |
| 1:24.9 | really changes the mood. |
| 1:26.7 | I'm a real believer that those June games, |
| 1:28.9 | I think let's just not worry too much about them. They came at the end of a long, hard season. |
| 1:33.7 | It was awful. Let's just pretend it didn't happen. And hopefully if we can get a couple of good |
| 1:38.3 | wins here, maybe Harry Kane can break the England's scoring record as well, and then we'll |
| 1:42.9 | just be motoring straight |
| 1:45.0 | towards Qatar and the World Cup full of optimism again, but of course it could go very badly |
... |
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