England Coach Wary Of Mane-Less Senegal

England national team head coach Gareth Southgate is fully aware of the threat posed by Senegal ahead of their 2022 FIFA World Cup meeting on Sunday December 4.

Many pundits believe the Three Lions will breeze into the final eight but Southgate is not expecting things to be so easy for his team against Senegal, who will be missing their influential striker Sadio Mane.

“Sadio is obviously an incredible player and every team would want to have him, but what we’ve seen with the team of Senegal is that they’ve become very strong in his absence,” he said as per India Today.

“They have shown great spirit through losing him so we know that it doesn’t make a difference to the level of the fixture for tomorrow.”

Senegal has several players who play in the English Premier League and second-tier Championship, led by Chelsea captain Kalidou Koulibaly and goalkeeper Edouard Mendy.

“We’ve been very impressed. We know that they’re African champions – very proud, great competitive spirit, a lot of belief in the team,” Southgate added.

“They have some excellent individual players who can cause problems – a good structure to the team as well. So I think Aliou has done a fantastic job.

“They were very unlucky not to qualify from the group in Russia (in 2018) and they’ve deservedly done it this time so we know exactly the size of the task ahead of us.”