England v Ukraine: Can Southgate lead his team to the Euro 2020 semi-finals?

ITV News reports on how the team and fans are preparing for Saturday's quarter-final

It is a measure of Gareth Southgate that after leading England to beat Germany, when asked about redemption for his own catastrophic semi-final penalty miss in 1996, his thoughts turned to his teammates back then.

Amid the euphoria and well earned back slapping on Tuesday night, Southgate reflected on how, 25-years-ago, his shoot-out failure denied each one of them a place in history.

"That will always live with me."

England’s boss is an empathetic and thoughtful man.

He is very smart too, more than adept at handling the 'bigger' questions beyond football, whether they be on racism or the wider impact of the pandemic.

But it is the private, individual conversations he has with his players that have had the greatest impact on this group.

To him they are people first and England footballers second and he believes that before you can improve someone on the pitch you need to understand who they are off it.

It is an approach that clearly works.

I have witnessed many England camps over the past decade or so and of all of them, this squad genuinely appears to be the most relaxed in each other’s company.

From the outside you do not detect any of the cliques or destructive egos that have hindered England teams in the past.

And, of course, it is quite a challenge for Southgate and his staff to keep everyone happy and motivated - a larger than usual squad means there are even more players who could feel peripheral to England’s impressive progress to the quarter finals.

For all Southgate’s gentle diplomacy in front of the cameras, behind them there is a man not afraid to make a tough, even unpopular decision. His team selections prove that.

He has admitted that when it comes to his England future, outside support is just as powerful as support from his bosses at the FA, but despite that he has ignored the noise from England fans and sections of the media to ram his team full of the exciting young attacking talent at his disposal.

Jack Grealish has so far only started once, Jadon Sancho hasn’t had a look in and Phil Foden hasn’t played in the last two games.

Southgate surprised everyone by promoting Bukayo Saka ahead of others and the Arsenal youngster repaid his manager’s faith with two outstanding performances.

The England manager has also resisted calls to play only one defensive midfielder, but guess what? Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips are two of the biggest reasons why the Three Lions have yet to concede a goal.

Ukraine presents just as big a challenge as Germany did but for completely different reasons.

Previous competitive matches between the two nations have always been tight affairs, England have won twice by the odd goal, Ukraine have won one and the other two games have been drawn.

England will be out of their Wembley comfort zone for the first time.

They are favourites to reach the final and cannot have escaped the growing expectation at home - the further you get in the tournament, the greater the pressure and the greater the jeopardy.

The players only have to listen to their manager still apologising for something that happened 25-years-ago to understand that.

Hopefully that hasn’t spread fear but instead inspires them all to go one better.