England manager Gareth Southgate has declared that he will not hesitate to pick Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford to take penalties if tonight’s Qatar 2022 round of 16 clash against Senegal goes to a shootout.
Saka and Rashford both missed their kicks last year in the final of the European Championships as England lost on penalties and were racially abused by some England fans.
When asked during his pre-match press conference yesterday if he had any doubts about both players taking penalties tonight against the African champions, Southgate said: “None at all.
“Marcus’s stats would be among the best in the world on penalty-taking. And Bukayo is taking them more regularly with his club. They’re both in a good space with that.”
England have been quite unlucky in shootouts but beat Colombia 4-3 on penalties at the Russia 2018 World Cup.
They were also successful in a shootout against Switzerland in the 2019 Nations League third-place match.
“In terms of the changes, Marcus came on as a sub in Moscow [against Colombia 2018] and took a penalty [and scored] four or five minutes earlier than we put him on at Wembley. I’ve seen lots of teams do that. If you score, it’s the right thing; if you don’t, then it’s the wrong thing.
“We’ve got to stick with our processes, give ourselves the best percentages of winning and we feel we are very well prepared. We’ve won two, we’ve lost the last one. We’ve refined some of those things we didn’t think were quite right. We feel that the process is good.”
