Gareth Southgate believes the delayed Euros will be a blessing for England’s latest generation such as Phil Foden and Mason Greenwood.
But the Three Lions manager raised concerns over the condition of players after a Covid-impacted season.
Southgate said: “We are a young squad, so another year of football, playing big matches, will help a lot, there’s no question about that.
“The flip side of that is we’ll be going into the tournament on the back of the most physically intense season ever: a very short end-season break, a very minimal pre-season and a fixture list that has been condensed and crammed into a 10-month period.
"We have three weeks between the last League game and the first game of the Euros, so a week’s less preparation. It’s going to be a different kind of challenge physically.”
Southgate believes the Euros will go ahead after being postponed by a year but, speaking at a GQ HEROES event in association with BMW, he added: “It would be easy to say we’re super confident, but the reality of the world at the moment is that none of us know what we’ll be allowed to do in three or four days’ time.
"It would be naive to think there isn’t a chance we won’t have crowds in, or smaller crowds in, or the format of the tournament in different cities might look different.”
