sport news MARTIN SAMUEL: Covid chaos leaves even Gareth Southgate struggling for answers

sport news MARTIN SAMUEL: Covid chaos leaves even Gareth Southgate struggling for answers
sport news MARTIN SAMUEL: Covid chaos leaves even Gareth Southgate struggling for answers

Gareth Southgate fiddled with his telephone, fiddled with his apparel, fiddled with the collar of his pristine, white England shirt. He folded his arms, as if posing for a team photograph but there was no-one else for the camera to focus on.

The empty seat to Southgate's right told its own story. It should have contained Mason Mount, but he was unavailable. He could not be at that night's team meeting either. He could not be anywhere but in his own room. Nor Ben Chilwell. Covid protocols.

Somehow, a Scotland player had tested positive for coronavirus but England had double the number stood down. 

Gareth Southgate had to field some tough questions ahead of a pivotal clash at Wembley

Gareth Southgate had to field some tough questions ahead of a pivotal clash at Wembley

Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell may have broken Covid protocols in speaking to Billy Gilmour

Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell may have broken Covid protocols in speaking to Billy Gilmour

The Football Association said they were following Public Health England guidelines; Public Health England said they were been guided by the FA. No wonder Southgate looked a little awkward.

He is usually so assured, so calm in his role. He's sent players, home from competitive matches. He's picked apart fights involving two of his star men. 

He's been handed racism, antagonism between players and supporters, he's been made the spokesman for his generation; nothing fazes him.

Yet this, on the eve of a match that may come to define England's campaign, given that it decides opposition, at a pinch qualification and whether England get to stay at Wembley, seemed a curveball too far. 

There was a certain weariness when he recalled stating, in March, that international footballers might be bumped up the vaccine queue. 

He recalled the chorus of disapproval at the time and that his views went nowhere. It wouldn't have mattered, he concluded. Precautions would be the same. 

It is still possible to contract covid after two jabs. The unsaid coda however was still present, however. 

Maybe it would have been easier to see the way out of this, if the FA could show PHE their covid passports.

Too late now, of course. So Southgate scrolled his device for updates and thought instead of his matchday timetable. 

The meeting at which he would be expected to name his team. The cut-off point for a decision to be made, either late Monday or first thing Tuesday. 

Chilwell is yet to play, unless Southgate was naming three different starting left-backs across three matches, and he wasn't. 

But Mount? He's on every Southgate teamsheet and, while not enjoying the perfect tournament, was nobody's candidate to be dropped.

A player is definitely on standby in case Mount does not make it and managers like a settled team. 

Southgate denied he was angry with his players, or angered by the position he is in, but this is far from ideal, for all the philosophical musing.

'I'm somebody who understands that when you're a manager you can lose a player to injury the day before the game,' he said. 

'I've never been one to throw something at the physio when he tells me the striker has done his ankle. 

'It's not his fault, it's not the doctor's fault, that's the way it is. Who plays? Somebody else. We crack on.'

The elephant in the room, or in the red zone, as stadium protocols have it, is that Chilwell and Mount appear to have met their Chelsea team-mate Billy Gilmour in an area off the pitch on Friday, which is not allowed. 

That would make it the players' responsibility, their breach, once Gilmour tested positive. 

Declan Rice, for instance, has two Czech Republic players as colleagues at West Ham. 

Shaking hands, even a hug, in the open air is

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