England coach Gareth Southgate said that he has started training players on penalties in preparation for the World Cup that will be held in Qatar this year.
And the British news agency “BA Media” reported that after the national team won penalty shootouts over its Colombian counterpart in the 2018 World Cup, and finished third in the European Nations League finals the following year, after winning the penalty shootout over the Swiss team, the England team suffered From the heartbreak last summer in the "Euro 2020" final.
Southgate, who missed a pivotal penalty kick in the semi-finals of the European Championship "Euro 1996" against the Germans, watched the team lose on penalties again against Italy in the European Championship final at Wembley Stadium.
The former defender has always emphasized his belief that success in penalty kicks is about skill, not luck, and for this reason the team began training on penalty kicks before the World Cup begins in November.
"We got into different details with the players about the things that they need to develop to be world champions," Southgate said.
"We didn't have the opportunity to do this in detail in the fall as we had to focus on the qualifying matches, so we felt it was a good time in this camp to get this started. The penalties were part of that."
"What is clear, in terms of permanent penalty takers with their clubs, is that we only have Harry Kane and James Ward Bruce."
"It is possible that Marcus Rashford, in terms of penalty kicks, is the second highest number, but Bruno Fernandes is the main Manchester United penalty taker. When we faced Italy, their first 5 players took more than 40 penalties in official matches. Kane is at the same level, followed by Rashford with 20 kicks."
"So we're going to have to look at this differently than just accepting that they're going to train for this at their clubs, that they're going to be able to pay it back, and that's the challenge we've put in with some individual work," Southgate said.
And he added, "We think that's the right thing to do, yes we think they may feel that it's a bit early, but it's necessary, if you exclude match days, and the day after the match, you are probably talking about 20 days of training from now until this situation that will happen in playoff roles.