Gareth Southgate praises Germany as ‘benchmark’ as they plan to join England in taking knee in Nations League

Gareth Southgate has praised Germany as “the benchmark” for international football and welcomed their expected decision to take the knee prior to the two sides’ Nations League encounter.

Germany are undefeated in 10 games and are now coached by Flick, who stepped in to replace Jogi Low following the European Championships last summer.

England memorably beat Germany in that tournament as part of their run to the final.

The defeat was met with a significant post-mortem in Germany with ‘Die Mannschaft’ failing to impress in their last two major tournaments, but Southgate hailed their consistency over the longer-term.

“For me, Germany and Brazil are still the benchmark in terms of countries that have regularly and consistently won tournaments,” Southgate said.

“Even when everyone talks about the 5-1 [England’s heavy World Cup qualifying win over Germany in 2001], they [Germany] ended up in the World Cup final on the back of that campaign. So you have to respect what they’ve been as a country and what they are as a country in footballing terms.

“That mentality is what we’re trying to create – we’ve got to keep trying to get to latter stages of competitions. Games like tomorrow are brilliant for us, that’s exactly the kind of test we need.”

Germany do not usually take a knee but will in solidarity with England on Tuesday night.

“We’re two nations with huge numbers of mixed heritage nationals and it’s an important sign for everybody, so we welcome that,” Southgate said.

“They were supportive of the LGBTQ+ community when they played in Hungary last year, I think they were the first team to do that with the captain wearing the [rainbow] armband and I think we are united in our beliefs on those things.”