‘England had swagger against the Dutch’

But then, was he ever going to admit the opposite? Jack Wilshere was expected to play in his first worldwide since the defeat to Iceland at Euro 2016, but picked up an injury in training. Apart from that, everything is going swimmingly.

His team selection certainly had people talking.

Time is running out for players to prove their worth with the World Cup just three months away, while Southgate does not have many more opportunities to tweak things ahead of the opener against Tunisia. Keeper Joe Hart isn’t playing for his club, while centre back John Stones has not been the same player since his injury in December.

Vardy, who has 14 Premier League goals this season, replaced Rashford on 68 minutes and remarkably failed to touch the ball once as the home side stepped up their pursuit for an equaliser.

Tottenham’s Kieran Trippier and Danny Rose will serve as wing-backs for the Three Lions, with the Liverpool duo Jordan Henderson and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain in central midfield.

Everything considered, perhaps it is a good thing that England’s opponents in the Johan Cruyff Arena have endured some hard times of their own in recent years.

“Harry Kane is an outstanding player and any team in world football would want his goalscoring ability – we’ve had to cope without him in the past”, he said.

Equally, it becomes easier to understand why Wilshere is built up that way given the other options.

It was certainly a pleasure for England manager Southgate to see Manchester United’s talented 25-year-old transfer the form that has illuminated parts of the season at Old Trafford on to the worldwide stage. “He has got some tremendous human qualities and he’s certainly a leader of men”. Whether I’m captain or not I like to think I lead by example anyway. “He is a very agile goalkeeper, quick around his goals, he is capable of making big saves, his distribution is excellent – a really outstanding distributor of the ball with his feet which is how we want to play”. I think Holland changed system three times within the game, and we were looking to see how our players would respond and the identified it each time.

There has also been a heavy focus on racism in Russian football following a number of high-profile incidents in recent years, but Southgate pointed to the recent online abuse directed at the U16s, who had seven black players in the starting XI in a game against Brazil two years ago.

Meanwhile in another friendly played at Dusseldorf, current World Champion Germany played out a 1-1 draw with 2010 champions, Spain.

Southgate added: “I had a really interesting couple of hours with Troy Townsend a couple of weeks ago”.