England have qualified for the Euro 2020 knockout phase without kicking a ball on a chaotic day that saw Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell go into isolation after Scotland’s Billy Gilmour tested positive for coronavirus.
The Scottish Football Association announced on Monday morning that the 20-year-old midfielder had returned a positive Covid-19 result and would miss Tuesday’s crunch Group D encounter with Croatia.
Gilmour helped boost Scotland’s qualification hopes with a man-of-the-match display in Friday’s 0-0 draw at Wembley, where he interacted with Chelsea team-mates Mount and Chilwell.
The England pair are having to isolate on the eve of tonight’s game against the Czech Republic as a precaution following consultation with Public Health England, with discussions about the situation ongoing.
07:16 AM
Good morning, there was good and bad news for England last night
England have qualified for the Euro 2020 knockout phase without kicking a ball on a chaotic day that saw Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell go into isolation after Scotland’s Billy Gilmour tested positive for coronavirus.
The Scottish Football Association announced on Monday morning that the 20-year-old midfielder had returned a positive Covid-19 result and would miss Tuesday’s crunch Group D encounter with Croatia.
Gilmour helped boost Scotland’s qualification hopes with a man-of-the-match display in Friday’s 0-0 draw at Wembley, where he interacted with Chelsea team-mates Mount and Chilwell.
The England pair are having to isolate on the eve of tonight’s game against the Czech Republic as a precaution following consultation with Public Health England, with discussions about the situation ongoing.
The fact Gilmour’s positive result appears to be having a bigger impact on the Three Lions than Scotland has left Gareth Southgate confused, but any stress over qualification was removed by results elsewhere on Monday.
Four of the best third-placed teams at the rearranged Euros progress to the knockout phase, with England’s four-point haul now guaranteed to put them in that bracket whatever happens against the pool-leading Czechs.
Belgium and Holland topped their respective groups with victories against Finland and North Macedonia on Monday, while Denmark thumped Russia to progress and Austria saw off Ukraine to also finish second in their group.
That left Finland and Ukraine in third place in Groups B and C respectively on three points each – meaning England, Switzerland, Sweden, Czech Republic and France can celebrate reaching the last 16.
Southgate is braced to be without Mount and Chilwell for tonight’s match, despite the pair producing negative lateral-flow tests on Monday afternoon following negative results in Sunday’s round of Uefa pre-match PCR tests.
Asked about the duo’s availability for the group decider, the England manager said: “Well, we don’t know at the moment.
“There’s obviously got to be quite a doubt, but there’s still a lot of discussions and investigations going on behind the scenes, so at the moment they’re isolating and we just have to find out over the last 12 hours or so.”
He added: “In terms of the team, we’ll need to go through details with the players in the morning really, so we’ll have to know by first thing in the morning of their availability and if not we’ll just have to play on without them.”
PA