Southgate hails ‘incredible maturity’ of England players

England manager Gareth Southgate has praised his players for their ‘incredibly mature’ reaction to abuse suffered against Hungary.

The Three Lions’ 4-0 victory at the Puskas Arena on Thursday evening was marred by racism from fans.

FIFA have opened disciplinary proceedings following monkey chants which were aimed at goalscorer Raheem Sterling and unused substitute Jude Bellingham.

Is Steve Bruce now just Mike Ashley’s human shield?

England have now received racist abuse in three of their last five away qualifiers in front of fans, highlighting why they continue to take the knee.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know how many camps we’ve had in the last four years but I seem to have been talking about this subject almost every time we’ve been together,” Southgate said.

“I can only reiterate that our players are incredibly mature in the way they deal with it.

“I think they feel supported by their team-mates, which is very important to them.

“I think their team-mates recognise how challenging it must be for our black players and how disappointing it is in the modern world that we continue to have to answer these questions because of the incidents that happen.

“But we can only keep taking the stance that we have done and hope that we continue to send the right messages, not only to people in football, but across society and that everybody keeps progressing.

“We know it’s going to take time and we know that feels very slow for everybody but you know we have to keep fighting that battle.”

England will face Andorra at Wembley on Sunday, returning to the stadium where they lost the European Championship final to Italy.

Wolves centre-back Conor Coady says he will be proud to take a knee alongside his team-mates at the game.

“We speak about it all the time,” he told a press conference. “It’s something we don’t want to speak about but it’s happening and I think with the way the boys deal with these situations, the way this team deals with these situations, because we’re such a close-knit group, it’s something where once it happens to one person, it happens to us all.

“We’ll carry on doing what we’re doing, we’ll carry on trying to take a stance and, as the manager has just said there, in terms of not just in football but in society. We want to try to help, and help change.

“I think it’s important we all stick together, which is something we’ll always do and the two boys, they are absolutely fantastic people but we’re a team that will always get around them as much as we possibly can.”