Gareth Southgate finds rare balance to leave England's present and future in safe hands

One theory for why World Cup winners so often fall at the first hurdle four years later – France in 2002, Italy in 2010, Spain in 2014, Germany this summer – is that the manager retains a little too much faith in the players who brought such success. Blinded by the triumph, he lets them linger a little longer than they should and the team’s natural churn is halted. Of Germany’s 2014 World Cup-winning XI, six started the first match in Russia, a 1-0 defeat to Mexico. Success breeds success, but if left unchecked it can also foster stagnation and decline.

England’s run to the semi-finals carried its own glow of success, a seminal summer when a group of young Englishmen unlocked two decades of pent-up potential. On Thursday, making his first squad announcement since the World Cup, Gareth Southgate was understandably loyal: of his five changes only two players – Ashley Young and Phil Jones – were dropped on form. “With us only being three games into the season, I felt some continuity was important,” the manager explained. “Those who were with us in the summer deserve the right to go again.”

But Southgate also gave the impression that he and his assistant Steve Holland have given detailed consideration to the delicate balance between retaining loyal servants and blooding fresh talent. After the shared experience of a major tournament and the close bonds the team developed, picking his squad will forever be more complex: how does he quantify the knowledge of playing in a World Cup semi-final, or the value of being a core member of the group? How does he measure those things against the superior club form of a player who wasn’t there?

Several players – like Fabian Delph, Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson – have not been starters for their clubs at the beginning of the new season but have kept their place in the international setup. Yet Southgate hinted that the longer they were on the fringes, the more likely he was to be pushed into some tough decisions. “I did not think to jettison a group who got to the semi-final would be fair,” he said. “But, next month and the months coming, we will have to take a view on that because we will be going into matches where fitness levels are important, and form will be key.”

As time passes, more contradictions will emerge. Why is Ross Barkley, playing brightly under Maurizio Sarri, excluded while his less favoured club teammate Ruben Loftus-Cheek is included? Why is Welbeck picked ahead of Bournemouth’s in-form Callum Wilson? Why wasn’t emerging talent like Mason Mount or Jadon Sancho given an opportunity?

On that last point, Southgate was unequivocal. “What have they done to warrant an England senior call-up? We’re as excited by them as anyone else, but given the profile of some of those lads at the moment we’ve got to be really careful. Are they ahead of the likes of [Nathaniel] Chalobah, who has around 100 England youth caps and should progress again in the Premier League, and [Joe] Gomez and [Luke] Shaw? We have quite a depth of talent.

“It should be harder – it’s been too easy to get into the England squad for some of the youngsters over the last 12, 24, and 36 months. They’ve gone in and done brilliantly, but what you want is real competition that makes it really hard to get in. It’s very difficult to pick a 17-year-old who’s had 10 minutes of first-team football. You’re talking about replacing senior players with some 17-year-old’s who haven’t played Premier League football.”

The new Nations League format begins next week, and while it should, in theory, create more interest than the often painful experience of the old international breaks, fewer friendlies will in practice mean less room for managers to experiment. More matches will have meaning and that might cause Southgate to instinctively lean towards those that served with merit in Russia. But there is also an inherent risk of being misled by that success, a risk which he seems acutely aware of and wholeheartedly prepared to confront when the time comes.