Gareth Southgate admits racist abuse adds ‘another layer’ to penalty picks

Gareth Southgate acknowledges that the racist abuse aimed at Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka following their Euro 2020 final penalty misses adds “another layer” of complexity when selecting future shoot-out takers.

England's tournament came to a crushing end last summer when spot-kicks proved their undoing once again, with Italy lifting the European Championship at their expense under the Wembley arch.

Rashford, Sancho and Saka missed the crucial penalties and were immediately subjected to sickening racist online abuse, which led to some individuals receiving custodial sentences.

Jude Bellingham was disturbed by the way team-mates were treated as “just black” rather than English once they missed and Southgate was asked whether potential racist abuse would impact how he chose players and prepared them.

“I have to say it never crossed my mind before,” he said five months out from the World Cup. “It will (do now). When I left The Grove (hotel) that day I couldn’t help but feel: ‘Have I created this situation here for the boys?’

“But it wouldn’t be right to not pick the players you think are best to take them because of what the possible consequences of them missing would be. I’ve got to pick them on the belief they are going to score.”

Put to Southgate that black players may now have a fear of missing being compounded by racist abuse, he said: “We’re goosed then. We’ve got 55 years of talking about penalties and everything else.

“So we’ve now got another layer that’s going to make it extremely difficult for us to win anything.”

Southgate knows what it is like to fail with a key penalty for England, having missed in the Euro 96 semi-final defeat at Wembley.

But unlike Rashford, Sancho and Saka, the former