England will be forced to deal with the relentless attacking threat posed by Kylian Mbappe if they are to stand any chance of beating France tonight, with the 23-year-old having already scored five World Cup goals over the course of the tournament so far.
Southgate was quizzed on how England will defend against Mbappe earlier this week and said: “Clearly with France, they’ve got an outstanding player that if you can get extra bodies around him, it can’t be one person’s responsibility.
“We’ve obviously got a player who can deal with that as well as anybody I can think of but it can’t be just his responsibility and you’ve got to have zonal coverage on players like that.
“We also can’t let Antoine Griezmann have the run of the park because he’s a pretty good player himself so I think we always prepare for the team for.
“These are the patterns we see, these are the positions individual players like to take up, you go into certain detail that they need to know because they know it’s important in the biggest games but equally we’re doing that at the other end of the pitch as well.”
