Shame Gareth won’t give his silky stars a licence to thrill
WE GOT a little insight into how Gareth Southgate’s football brain works — and how he sees football — when England played Wales this week.
With the greatest respect to Wales, if you couldn’t be proactive that night, then whenever could you be? We’re talking about a game which had as little jeopardy as you’ll ever get in tournament football. The only risk England had of not qualifying that night was by losing 4-0.
It was a game crying out for James Maddison and Mason Mount — two of England’s most dynamic and creative players — but what did we get? A midfield built not for creativity but for pragmatism, with Jordan Henderson playing further up the field and Declan Rice sitting.
Henderson is a player who has an admirable attitude but who is limited in the creative side of the game. He’s a player most suited to closing a game out when you are under pressure but not someone you bring on in the last 10 minutes, when you are chasing the game.
The players you want in the creative positions are going to be on the half-turn all the time, aware of what’s around them. You want someone who can turn, skip past an opponent, deliver a cute pass and chip in with goals. Henderson, with his two goals in 72 games for England, is not what I’m talking about. For me, Maddison and Mount should have been starting on Tuesday.
That approach against Wales tells me that now we’re getting deeper into the competition, watchfulness and pragmatism will be Gareth’s bywords. If he’s pragmatic against Wales, he’ll be pragmatic against Senegal tomorrow.
I do think England have enough to win this next game, but you’re not going to get beyond Senegal, face France in a quarter-final, then suddenly take the handbrake off
and fill your team with more creative midfielders. Don’t expect to see England minus the handbrake any time soon unless they’re chasing a game. Don’t expect to see a great deal of Mount, or anything of Maddison.
That’s a huge shame because Gareth has a great array of creative players at his disposal. Players such as Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka, Jack Grealish and Maddison are instinctive. For them, the picture in their head is forever changing when they’re on the ball.
What enters their imaginations when they get into the last third with the ball at their feet is purely instinctive. They simply don’t have time to think about it. They have a reading of the game which is different. It’s not like American football, where the quarterback shouts out the number and everyone knows what they’re going to do at that moment in time.
Gareth can’t coach Foden, Saka, Grealish what to do when they get into those situations. The only thing they need to understand from him is the shape to get back into when they lose the ball. These men can do untold damage on this huge stage.
But I get how Gareth thinks. He’s innately pragmatic and riskaverse, especially against stronger teams. He was a centre half, after all. He’s the one who has to face the press and the nation when things don’t go well. His argument will be: ‘Trust me. I’ve been to the semi-final and the final of the last two major competitions.’
Many will want to see more ambition from his England team but that pragmatic approach might still take the country a long way.
There is a precedent here, which older England fans will need no reminding of. Sir Alf Ramsey’s 1966 World Cup- winning side had a pragmatic approach and outstanding strikers — and they ended up winning the World Cup. The pragmatism extended to them leaving out Jimmy Greaves — one of the greatest goalscorers in English football history — because they thought he wouldn’t do the hard yards. It was just a team where everyone knew their job and did it. No one ever looks back on 1966 now and remembers English pragmatism. No one ever remembers how you won it — only that you DID win it and got the job done. England might not be quickening our pulses in the days to come but this brand of football could still take them a long way.
HOW harsh it was on the England players to say the 0-0 draw against the United States was a bad result and performance.
It was an assessment based on outdated, lazy preconceptions about how you should always beat the USA. Did anyone actually watch how that team played? They, along with Japan, have been the real surprises of this tournament for me: a really good team, with skill and athleticism.
A team from a ‘developing’ footballing country usually show naivety for long periods. They can have a good five minutes, then the naivety shows. Against England, the USA played like a nation with a footballing pedigree and when you start to analyse American soccer, you can see the emergence, which has looked like it might be happening for years.
There is a huge immigrant dimension to the USA from footballing countries, excellent college facilities, sports scholarships and the money they throw at it. Of course, there’s the challenge of the established sports but you also have to factor in their attitude to sport, the size of a country with 300 million people and the enormous Hispanic influence. When they host the World Cup in 2026, they could be a real force. We’re witnessing a broader competitive effect here in other ways, with Japan and Morocco emerging from the groups at Germany and Belgium’s expense, but the USA, with Japan, are the ones I’ve been mightily impressed by. Don’t be surprised if the USA beat Holland today and Japan do the same against Croatia on Monday.