Gareth Southgate has stressed that England can have no room for complacency when they face Panama in Sunday’s World Cup Group G encounter in Nizhny Novgorod.
The Three Lions are guaranteed to qualify from Group G if they beat the Central Americans, who began their campaign in Russia with a 3-0 defeat to Belgium.
Even though Panama were comfortably beaten by the Red Devils and sit 55th in the world rankings, Southgate is taking nothing for granted given the number of upsets that have taken place so far in the tournament.
“We’ve seen already the difficulty big countries in terms of rankings have had in breaking down lower-ranked teams,” the England boss told Sky Sports News. “That’s been a theme right the way throughout.
“There’s no way there’s any complacency in the way we’ve prepared for the game. The situation in the group is obviously a healthy one for us, but we’ve got to focus on our performance.
“We want to show people an England team can play in a different way. We’ve got technically good players, we want them to get on the ball and express themselves and really attack the game like we did the other night [in the 2-1 win over Tunisia].”
Belgium and Tunisia have already played their second Group G game, the Red Devils running out 5-2 winnersover the Carthage Eagles on Saturday.