England World Cup squad: Gareth Southgate urges his players to let their hair down ahead of Russian campaign

Southgate wants his squad to 'relax and switch off' over the next few days, because he wants them fresh for when they report to St George’s Park next week

Gareth Southgate has told his England squad to go and let their hair down over the next few days, warning that a culture of excessive professionalism can stop English players from achieving the “mental switch off” they need before the World Cup.

Speaking the day after announcing his 23-man England squad – who will start to join up at St George’s Park on Monday – Southgate insisted that he was “not interested” in his players’ behaviour this week. Many of the squad are currently on foreign holidays, squeezed into the seven-day break between the end of the Premier League season and the start of World Cup preparation.

How England players use that short gap has been an issue in the past. Wayne Rooney was criticised for holidaying in Las Vegas immediately before Euro 2012. Before Euro 2016 the England team volunteered to hand over their passports to the FA as a guarantee that they would not go on holidays just before the tournament.

But this time Southgate will take a liberal line with the players. He said that he wants his squad to “relax and switch off” over the next few days, because he wants them fresh for when they report to St George’s Park next week.

“I’m not interested in what they do over the next few days, it is four weeks before we have a game,” Southgate said at Wembley on Thursday morning. “Before Euro ‘96 I had three days in Magaluf with Aston Villa, so it would be a bit hypocritical to discuss what the correct preparation was. I went for a run on a couple of mornings, but it might have been run back home rather than run!”

While football has changed over the last 22 years, Southgate said that modern over-professionalism was at risk of stopping players from ever switching off or relaxing. If that means drinking then Southgate accepts that.

“Everything in a player’s life now is ‘fill this bloody form in’, ‘how do you feel’? There’s a danger we overfill them with professionalism and ‘doing the right thing’. A lot of them don’t drink, but some do, and some need to wind down in a different way. They need a switch off, and I don’t see an issue with it in the next three or four days. Most have gone away with their partners and they have young kids anyway. But those that don’t, they are physically in good shape, they need a mental switch off.”

The players currently on holiday do have some work to do while they are away. “The mental freshness is key,” Southgate said. “They’ve got little programmes to be working through. The days are gone where players come back to pre-season stones overweight, it just doesn’t happen. They’re back earlier, they probably do too much in the summer. They need that mental freshness.”

When the England players start to join up they will work hard for two weeks ahead of the Nigeria and Costa Rica friendlies in early June, and their flight to St Petersburg on 12 June before the tournament begins.

“When we’re in, we work,” Southgate said. “It will be spot on, the work we do will be correct and the focus will be intense. But when we have those periods of having a day at home, I want them to relax and switch off. Of course, the closer we get to a tournament, then we have got to recognise the balance of all of that.”

Southgate's squad has a young look to it (Getty)

When England are in Russia they will be based in Repino, a small spa town outside St Petersburg, where their families will be staying. Southgate said he is happy for the players to go into St Petersburg on their days off.

“It can’t just be 24-hour a day football,” Southgate said. “They might do a couple of things criticised, but I have to be brave enough to say that I am prepared for them to go into St Petersburg to sightsee or see families. Our feel of [Repino] is that it’s not going to full of fans who’ve travelled for the matches. It’s an unlikely destination for that. The players should be able to go down to the sea front and have some freedom . In terms of how they occupy their time in the hotel, a lot of them are young kids really, it’ll be Fortnite or whatever it is.”

“Obviously there is some trust in that which has to be respected. But I think they know that. You are creating an adult environment. Most of them have young children. I am not going to treat them like children. It’s important you give them responsibility.”