London: The historic Wembley Stadium will host the knockout game between Germany and England on Monday in the Euro 2020. The match will begin at 9:30 pm IST. England's starting line-up has been reportedly revealed before the start of the match. This lineup shows major changes from al the previous matches played by England.
England coach, Gareth Southgate is reportedly going ahead with five defensive options in his 11. Maguire, Stones and Walker are the three centre backs in the England squad and all the three would be playing together against Germany today. Apart from these three, Southgate will play Kyle Walker and Luke Shaw at right and left-back respectively. Thus, the England coach has decided to go with five proper defenders and dropped the likes of Grealish, Foden, Mount, and Sancho.
The English coach is going with this combination to tackle the ever-powerful German midfield and their strength on the wing. Muller, Gnabry, Kroos, Gundogan and Gosens are part of the strong attacking options that play in the German team.
Southgate's plan of playing five defenders means that England will have limited attacking options and they will play on the counter-attack. We must expect a lot of long balls from the English defenders.
Let's look at England's reported Starting Lineup: Pickford; Walker, Stones, Maguire; Trippier, Rice, Phillips, Shaw; Sterling, Saka, Kane
Germany's predicted XI: Neuer; Ginter, Hummels, Rüdiger; Kimmich, Gündoğan, Kroos, Gosens; Havertz, Müller, Gnabry
With the kind of lineup that is expected to play on Monday, it looks imperative that Luke Shaw and Trippier will have to do a lot of running to recent German attackers from scoring also assist English forwards.