The Athletic

Hello, I'm Dan Bardell.

Welcome to the England show on The Athletic.

A big big week ahead as England faced Germany

in the last 16 of Euro 2020 at Wembley on Tuesday evening

and on today's pod we're going to take a look inside

the training base Garra Southgate's team are using

to prepare at St George's Park.

Hello everyone, I'm Aaron McGuire.

I don't know what day it is, but yeah, this is the diary.

We had a water balloon fight after training.

Dean Henderson lost. He got ambushed.

Somebody hit Jack Grealish when he wasn't expecting it.

He's not fuming, he just wants to get him back.

I think Harry Kane started out for him to come in and, you know, he did a little sing-song while he was eating food.

So I was just sat there looking at him like, oh my God, I'd change right in front of me.

To help me on the panel from The Athletic, I'm joined by Ollie Kay, Jack Pitt, Brooke and Dan Sheldon. Dan, welcome your England podcast debut this morning, I believe. I've read your piece on England and St George's Park and how things have been down there. I found it very, very interesting. Just want to tell our listeners a little bit what the aim of the piece were and what you were trying to get across? The idea of the piece really, and I put it together with Danny Taylor,

obviously our colleague at the Athletic and just sort of what is life like as a player

inside St George's Park at the moment. Obviously they're in a COVID bubble so they can't see

family and friends or anything like that. So it's what have the FA put on to offer the players as kind of entertainment because, you know, we all know professional footballers don't spend from nine to five on a football pitch training, you know, it may be two, three hours and then there's a lot of downtime. So it's really just looking at what are they, what are they up to in their spare time? What sort of games can they, you in and that's kind of the crux of the piece so yeah me and me and Danny went away and you know did some digging and looked into it yeah i'll say straight off the bat if you do want to go and read dan's piece in full on the athletic and subscribe for just the pound a month you can do so at the moment by going to theathletic.com slash England pod.

Jack, welcome to the podcast as well.

Of all our writers, you've probably been the closest to the England camp throughout the tournament.

...