[ad_1]
By the time the PA announcer announced a ‘lap of appreciation’, with what at the time appeared to be a wickedly mocking level of excitement, England’s players found themselves cheering a vast expanse of empty red plastic seats. One of the great fears in tournament football, among the better teams, is peaking too early. At least on that front, England seems safe.
Instead, they took the nuclear option, the ultimate comeback booed by schoolboys who lost 1-0 to an Iceland team now ranked 72nd in the world. And not just lost, but lost badly, like a team playing through an extremely debilitating migraine.
A degree of apathy is understandable. It’s not quite a launch day. England will fly to Leipzig on Monday. For now, the players are in the pre-departure stage, regurgitating their airsickness pills, nibbling on one last bonus square of sawdust army chocolate, and anxiously rattling their parachute packs. Nobody wants to get injured now. The game really seemed unnecessary, cut short at the end of the week of Big Brother-style eliminations.
The problem for Gareth Southgate is that there are still difficult problems to solve. Southgate has virtually torn this team apart over the last few months and implanted something new, trusting himself to perform a sort of alchemy on the parts to bolt this thing through.
But there was nothing here, no pulse, no tension, no sense of a system or set of weapons in play. Passes and combinations were missed or not attempted at all. At the very least, it was a great game for the people who weren’t involved. Conor Gallagher has never looked such an attractive prospect, a nasty, energetic, edgy presence.
And so we go on like this. Predicting success in any tournament is a foolish thing. England is waiting. England as a whole is wrong to expect. But England will expect the same again. The interesting thing this time is that in theory this team really has a chance to win those Euros. But they are also wrong. The ceiling is high. The ceiling also has holes.
The squad was chopped and changed quite a bit in search of solutions to the issues at left back, central midfield and central defence. The problem for Southgate in this defeat is that nothing was learned in either of those roles. Or rather, all the things that were taught were bad.
Those areas of interest were filled by Kieran Trippier as the left-back who will start at the Euros, who is a warrior and a smart defender but was poor in a team that needed width.
In central defence, Mark Guehy must now be considered as the starting centre-back alongside John Stones. He is good with the ball. He is not particularly aggressive in the air. Iceland rose a little above him. It’s hard not to see trouble ahead without at least one dominant presence there.
Then, finally, we come to central midfield, the key to any tournament team that felt empty at the start of the day and remained so at the end. The selection of Kobbie Mainoo suggests that he is in the catbird spot. Mainoo is a wonderful young player. But the double pivot with Declan Rice didn’t work here. Rice had to sit a little longer. His waves were missed. And the spaces were too big. The midfielder was too friendly. Mainoo is an artist. England needed someone nastier, more fiercely dedicated to filling spaces.
after the promotion of the newsletter
The worst part was the goal. Iceland swept through England’s midfield unopposed, Jon Dagur Thorsteinsson headed into vast open spaces of Wembley’s lime green grass, Mainoo dropped back, Stones waited too long to challenge. The kick was low and hard and into the corner. But it was all too much, too dead, without energy, resistance, the things that make a team.
That will give Southgate trouble. It is what he fears, what he sweats over. To be open, fragile and vulnerable. In the past, opponents have remarked on the sheer muscle of Southgate’s best teams, the feeling of running into a wall of cement bags. This was a physically weak England.
As for the cover presence next to Rice, nothing was really decided. Role #4 (old school notation) is extremely complex. The angles are individual and unusual. The covering radar, the sense of where and how is vital.
In the absence of a specialist now, England are sure to fill this area with more energy, Gallagher’s endlessly humming engine, pinch-hitter Jude Bellingham at No.10 in place of Phil Foden, whose performance here is best erased from history, and where possibly pixelated by any surviving tapes.
The second half was even worse, England’s seams too lost, the spaces too wide. Sometimes teams, especially good, well-mannered teams like this one, need to feel a little anger. Watching a tape of that defeat should do the trick.
So, on to Blankenhain. England is still waiting. England will always be waiting. At least he can expect a lot more than that.
[ad_2]
