Flairless England faltered in Frankfurt. But why?
Gareth Southgate bears the brunt of the criticism but are England just gonna England?
On Sunday night there were more than a few observers commenting on the quality of the EURO 2024 fixture between Scotland and Hungary. The quality of football matches has always been a strange concept to me.
I guess I like tension and nerves and the looming threat of drama as much as a particular standard of play. If that match had been on opening night or in the middle of a league season, it wouldn’t have done much for me but both teams needed to win and it felt like it. I enjoyed it on that basis.
Hungary’s winning goal kept their hopes of progressing in third place alive and they scored it on the counter-attack from a Scotland corner. That was drama. I’d have rather it happened at the other end but it was the kind of outcome that can only be the result of jeopardy. Jeopardy in football can’t be observed through a lens that sees only quality.
All of which is to say I don’t mind an objectively rough football match if it means something. As an England supporter, that might be just as well.
Flairless England faltered in Frankfurt. But why?
These, then, are the death throes of Gareth Southgate’s England. The manager who guided a second-round national team to successive major tournament semi-finals and the final of EURO 2020, who convinced a country that winning a penalty shoot-out against Colombia and beating Sweden at the World Cup weren’t exactly the kind of hurdles that had tripped England over for decades, is about to leave the job in ignominy.
At least, that’s the consensus after the Three Lions drew with Denmark in their second group game at EURO 2024, a result that effectively saw them safely into the knock-out rounds.
Southgate hasn’t been a spectacular success and he certainly hasn’t been flawless, but he has been a steady leader for a handy group of footballers since he stepped into the top job in 2016, weeks after England stumbled against Iceland at the European Championships. Football has a short memory.
Southgate has had a large number of very fine players at his disposal during the second half of his England tenure, so much so that long runs at EURO 2020 and World Cup 2022 have widely been regarded as a credit to the players while the subsequent losses were seen as failures by the manager.
The response to England’s draw with Denmark was extreme in all the places you’d expect, undeniably an over-reaction yet not unjustified when the standard of the performance – and, more importantly, the shape of the performance – are taken into account.
England fumbling their way to an unedifying draw in their second group fixture is becoming an unwanted habit. It didn’t hold them back at the Euros in 2021 and the World Cup in 2022, and there’s no reason it should be any different in 2024. But, while the Denmark game wasn’t unusually tame, it did seem stark.
There was a sense after the game in Frankfurt and indeed the previous win over Serbia that England could do more, could be more. Southgate has helped England to overcome some of the obstacles they’ve struggled with in the past and deserves to be treated at least a little more respectfully, but it’s plain that he isn’t getting the best from an extraordinarily capable attacking cohort.
Southgate’s tactically conservative football is a public opinion double whammy. It's viewed as the reason he doesn't get the best out of those talented attackers and as the failing that ultimately prevents England from beating the best opponents. He is undoubtedly pragmatic but there is more to it than a simple reluctance to go for it when the going is good.
In fact, Southgate’s weakness as England manager has more often been in producing a cohesive midfield. The likes of Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling made one end of the field simple enough and solid Premier League defenders tied up the other. The middle has often been a problem.
Not a man to hide, Southgate openly experimented with Liverpool full back Trent Alexander-Arnold in a holding midfield role against Serbia and Denmark. As a notion it’s not without merit or precedent, but it was a matter of reputational risk for the manager and it didn’t go his way.
Southgate isn’t oblivious when England put in a stinker. His substitutions in Frankfurt demonstrated that.
Conor Gallagher is not a world-beater but in the context of the tournament squad he was an understandable switch at the right time for Alexander-Arnold. The withdrawal of Kane indicated firstly that Southgate recognised the need to stretch the pitch and have his centre forward play on the defenders, and secondly that he was not the architect of Kane’s so-called selfless refusal to stay high.
Eberechi Eze and Jarrod Bowen came on to emphasise Southgate’s embarrassment of attacking riches. Bukayo Saka was an iffy choice to come off and Phil Foden a decision enforced by a knock as well as a couple of disappointing displays, but there was no lack of insight or boldness in Southgate’s substitutions.
The changes righted the balance and improved the performance, briefly, before England shrank once more.
Kane being substituted after scoring the opening goal was as good an indication as possible that Southgate isn't always seeing his plan carried out as expected.
The captain's positioning has been subject to debate for years and his willingness to drop deep and get involved in a stodgy battle of a match is by no means a stick with which to beat him.
Yet it's in precisely these games that tactical acumen is necessary and England need Kane to make the pitch big or to have a consistent plan to get players beyond him. The substitution in Frankfurt offered a clue as to which of those options is being asked of him.
One of Kane's captaincy predecessors, Alan Shearer, has become one of the more astute pundits and highlighted England's lack of energy and intensity against Denmark, not in the fighting-like-lions sense but as a possible explanation for 90-plus minutes of ineffective and visibly higgledy-piggledy pressing.
A properly executed press has been one of the defining characteristics of all of the more surprising performances of the championships to date. England's ragged attempts come down to preparation, delivery or both. Southgate and his players all know how to do this and should be having some difficult conversations about it.
Systems and tactics aside, the worry for supporters is that there’s always the feeling that tournament matches like the timid win against Serbia and the lacklustre draw against Denmark are just examples of England being England.
Expectations weigh heavy, exacerbated rather than eased by England finally having players of the quality required to meet them. They take the lead, cede control and often get pegged back. They've been doing it in bigger matches than Frankfurt for longer than some of their players have been alive.
There's more behind that happy little habit than Southgate. Under him and with a generation of genuine quality, England have mastered a lot of the skills they've lacked historically. Managing matches isn't one of them.
The inability to force home an advantage in a major tournament match is as English as pie and mash. England struggle to control games when they’re in front and, yes, Southgate’s management is a factor. His mindset is risk-averse but his best players are forwards, two competing forces that create an imbalance against the best opponents.
England’s apparently congenital failure to maximise the potential of inventive, incisive flair players defies one answer to that challenge. Southgate has creative forwards in his squad but left a couple who offer something different at home, not to mention the admittedly meagre pickings available as natural left backs. He might yet be proven right on that score but he’ll have to find some other way to kill off matches.
Various tactical strands combine to form a single strategic solution: absolute clarity of purpose throughout the front six. For one thing, the midfield pairing has to be right. Southgate hasn’t always had the pieces to fix that but he certainly does now.
Southgate appears intent on bringing Gallagher into midfield to keep Jude Bellingham more advanced, but Bellingham dropping in alongside would do three important jobs in one: get the Real Madrid man on the ball, end the Alexander-Arnold experiment, and release Foden to roam and better influence the match. These are round pegs for round holes and every player knows his job, Kane at centre forward very much included.
England’s manager has shoulders broad enough to be a lightning rod for criticism but it was clear in both Gelsenkirchen and Frankfurt that his players need to sharpen up too. It’s not about blood and guts – neither effort nor passion is the issue – but doing what we all know they can do as top-level professionals.
Win, lose or draw against Slovenia in their final group game in Cologne, England are going through to the last 16. All is not lost; England haven’t been beaten yet and teams have made worse starts than this and won major tournaments. England’s European Championships are not over.
Southgate’s England probably is. For all these mitigations, all the shared blame with his players and the basic shortcomings of Englishness as it manifests in tournament football and has done for almost a century, he’s been in the role for long enough to shoulder the accountability.
More than anything else this summer, England need to stop inviting trouble when they’re in the ascendancy. It might not be very English to go for the throat when the opposition are wavering but that’s how the elite become elite.
In the longer term, England simply must find a way to nurture and mobilise its flair players, the wonderful wildcards who’ve been overlooked time and again by managers under pressure.
That’s no easy feat and it’s seldom been done in the past. But when you’re faced with a lock in international football, it’s useful if the key hasn’t had all its teeth polished away and been cast aside as an expensively acquired system player in the club game.
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“Terry Venables dealt with it brilliantly to take the pressure off us and made sure that, inside the England camp, it was still a positive place to be. It is going to be down to Gareth Southgate to try to do the same in the coming days, because there is probably a barrage of criticism on the way. The manager is going to bear the brunt [of] it, because we are not seeing these players perform the same way for England as they do every week for their clubs.”
Alan Shearer draws on his EURO 96 experience to offer a peek behind the England curtains.
Salty beef extracts
Chelsea, Newcastle and Villa are leading a new age of PSR transfer nonsense (i)
Turkey’s win over Georgia gave me a feeling I haven’t felt in a long time (i)
Even Southgate’s biggest fans are losing faith in this England team (i)
How Hungary’s ‘absolute unit’ became the poster boy for the anti-Pep brigade (i)
Can the USMNT prove they are among the world’s best at Copa América? (The Guardian)
Africa Cup of Nations clobbered by unwanted Club World Cup (The Guardian)
A brief oasis of football before what will replace it begins again (Unexpected Delirium)
Dessert
There’s nothing big or clever about Pantofola D'Oro's new calcio-inspired collection, but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter.
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