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England manager Southgate: Players don't want to walk off

England manager Gareth Southgate says his players don't want to walk off the pitch if they are racially vilified.

Danny Rose and Callum Hudson-Odoi were targeted by Montenegro fans during a European Qualifier in Podgorica in March.

The Three Lions boss said at that the time that his team would consider walking off if the same incident occurred again.

Speaking ahead of the Nations League semi-final against the Netherlands, Southgate said: "In terms of walking off the pitch, that isn't something they (the players) are all on board with.

"In fact, none of the current team have expressed that as a preference. The bit that isn't clear if we did that - apart from the question of would we be penalised? - it's not clear to me what would happen then. It would be a statement, but what would that lead to?

"They're clear that they don't want the story at the end to be about them as individuals, they want football to be the story. But they've also had an opportunity since then to speak and have an impact.

"In Montenegro, in particular, from our perspective we only picked it up in the last five minutes of the game, so there's a difference between that and if things happened earlier in the game. We've discussed ways that we can make the players more comfortable or that we can manage if they heard things earlier in the game.

"How would we report those more easily? We've encouraged them to speak up when it happens."

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Freddie Taylor

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