22 November 2023 , 22:30
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England are set to hit the road again before next summer's Euros with St James's Park in the frame to host a friendly.
Three Lions boss Gareth Southgate is lining up two matches at the end of the season to get ready for the finals in Germany. England - who have already confirmed March friendlies with Brazil and Belgium - will play one match at Wembley and another at a different venue.
Newcastle's home is an option with the Football Association working on plans and also potential venues. The last time England played at Newcastle was when Steven Gerrard and David Beckham scored in a 2-0 World Cup qualifying win over Azerbaijan in March 2005.
The pre-Euros friendlies would take place after the Champions League final on June 1 which is set to be stagedat Wembley. England are likely to play the first game on the road and the second back at Wembley while Southgate’s squad would base themselves at St George’s Park for training before they fly out to Germany.
They have followed a similar pattern before recent tournaments as they played Australia and Turkey in the build-up to Euro 2016 at Sunderland and Manchester City respectively and also faced Portugal at Wembley. Southgate’s side faced Nigeria at Wembley and then Costa Rica at Leeds United before the 2018 World Cup and played Austria and Romania at Middlesbrough’s Riverside ground before Euro 2020.
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England booked their place at Euro 2024 last month after beating Italy at Wembley. They secured their passage with two fixtures remaining, having won five of their opening six group matches.
The Three Lions beat Malta 2-0, before being held to a 1-1 draw against North Macedonia in their final group game on Monday. "I think the really big results were in March winning in Italy and the result against Ukraine so it meant coming here tonight was a completely different test," said Southgate.
Gareth Southgate's England are heading to Euro 2024 (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)"Given that we had already qualified and everything we achieved, I thought the mentality of the players tonight was excellent and the quality with the ball was good on a very difficult pitch.
"It was probably just that finish, that final pass which was difficult to find against their defence but I thought lots of positives to take from these performances. We’ve now got the next exciting bit with the draw at the beginning of December so we will see exactly what the path looks like."