Gareth Southgate expects England stars to ‘want to be a part of’ June qualifiers

Gareth Southgate does not plan to rest key players for June’s straightforward-looking qualifiers and warned England’s quest for Euro 2024 glory will be in “trouble” if focus or commitment wavers.

The journey to next summer’s finals in Germany got off to a dream start with last Thursday’s 2-1 victory against reigning European champions Italy in Naples.

Three days later England comfortably beat Ukraine 2-0 at Wembley, meaning they took maximum points from the hardest double-header in a group completed by North Macedonia and Malta.

The Euro 2020 runners-up will be expected to record another six-point haul when they face the latter nations in the summer, but Southgate will not allow complacency to seep in.

“I would expect everyone would want to be here and want to be a part of it,” the England boss said of June’s Group G games away in Malta and against North Macedonia at Old Trafford.

“We’ll of course look to psychologically refresh the group by giving them some time off at the end of the season.

“But if we start to think that we haven’t got to turn up for games in June because the world ranking of the opponents isn’t as high as the two opponents we’ve had now, then we are in trouble, really.

“That’s not the approach we’ll be looking for and I don’t think the mentality of the team (is like that).

“We’re challenging the team to be the best in Europe in the next 13 months.

“That requires everybody’s commitment, that requires everybody to be prepared to play whenever and that requires the standards of training every day and everything we do to be at the highest level no matter who we’re playing against.”

Southgate stuck with the tried and tested for this month’s tough matches, but the fixtures against Malta and North Macedonia