Gareth Southgate casts envious eye towards Germany’s Joshua Kimmich

It is always revealing when a manager name-checks an opposition player before a game and it was no different when Gareth Southgate did so on Sunday. Asked to assess Germany, whom England face in the Nations League at Wembley on Monday night — in a tie that has become fraught for so many reasons — he zeroed in on one man, betraying admiration and envy in equal measure.

“Joshua Kimmich is fundamental to the team and the way they play,” Southgate said of the midfield controller. “He organises the game for them and he reads it so well.”

The envy is rooted in Kimmich being the type of player that England lack. A little like Luka Modric, Frenkie De Jong, Jorginho and Marco Verratti. The link between this group? They have each been central to the most painful defeats of Southgate’s six-year England tenure. Modric helped to move Croatia away from England in the 2018 World Cup semi-final, ditto De Jong for the Netherlands in the 2019 Nations League semi-final and both Jorginho and Verratti for Italy in the Euro 2020 final.

After five matches without a win and all of the angst and introspection, the fear that Southgate has entered his international end game, he is desperate to turn back the clock to the summer of last year when he enjoyed perhaps his finest hour — the 2-0 Wembley win against Germany in the last 16 of the European Championship. Could a similar victory change the narrative after what has been and ahead of what is to come — the World Cup in Qatar?

Kimmich played at right wing-back in the Euro 2020 tie, filling in for his team. But he was back in midfield when Germany hosted England in June in the reverse Nations League fixture, dictating the tempo, pulling the strings. England would pinch a 1-1 draw when they rallied