Gareth Southgate has insisted England are ready to make the whole nation “proud” with a fearless, attacking performance against France.
Southgate says he does not want his players to go out and “just cover up on the ropes” and instead wants them attack the world champions with all guns blazing. England boss Southgate has seen his team score 12 goals in their first four games and he says he does not want to change that mentality and it will be a night for heroes.
When asked in an interview with ITV whether he wants the attacking approach maintained, Southgate said: “Yeah without a doubt. There is no point going into a game like this and just covering up and sitting on the ropes. We believe we can cause problems with the ball and we intend to do that.
“We’ve beaten some big teams. We know we have the experience of high pressure nights behind us and as a team we’ve been resilient through a lot of situations but they all prepare you for nights like this.
“We got to the first final for 55 years this is a quarterfinal. We've won a semifinal and been to a semifinal of the World Cup before.
“But, of course, it is a big game against a high quality opponent. Everything that has happened in the past is history, it all comes down to Saturday night.
“What they have been through and what they’ve learnt and the way we have gone about things in this tournament.
“They’ve understood what we have been trying to do they’ve kept calm and shown belief in what they’ve been asked to do and shown a great mentality about the way they’ve played.
“Always these nights are always nights that bring millions of people together..They will remember where they were and we want to give them another night to be proud of.”
France are the reigning world champions, they have got arguably the best player in the world in Kylian Mbappe and will be an intimidating challenge for England.
However, Southgate says England are now a team full of belief that they can win and they have come a long way in terms of mentality. They reached the World Cup semi final four years ago, were in the Euros final but now want to go one step further.
Southgate said: “Belief. We’ve got to recognise that four years ago if we had played France we could have talked a good game but we genuinely didn’t have the evidence of big performances, experiences of big nights that could really give us the faith that we could win.
“Now we’ve had a lot of those nights and we’ve a lot of those attributes. We know, of course, at this stage they will be very evenly matched games. But we know we have the quality to win the game.
“We’ve got to stick on the path we’ve been heading. We’ve done a lot of things very well. There are things we are going to have to do better to get a result against France. The basis of our game is good with and without the ball.
“We need to make sure that the detail is as close to perfect. We are never gonna get perfection but we have to get as close to that as we can.”
