How triumph was plotted in analysts’ dossiers
England are prepared for every opponent in Russia – including Sweden, reveals Sam Wallace
From the moment that Eric Dier’s penalty hit the Colombia net at 11.52pm Moscow time on Tuesday, there remained realistically only two full training days before England’s young players face the next game of their lives, in the World Cup quarter-finals.
Preparing to beat Sweden on Saturday will encompass very different challenges to those presented by Colombia, from set-pieces and build-up play to where Jordan Pickford can expect the Swedes to put their penalties – if it comes to that.
Gareth Southgate and Steve Holland knew that reaching the quarter-finals would require them to prepare a team over Thursday and Friday – Wednesday having been earmarked as a day both staff and players get as much downtime as possible. With the critical session at the team’s base in Repino today there is no time to pull it together from scratch, so instead the Football Association had one other option: prepare for all possible opponents.
Under the scouting programme drawn up by Southgate and Dan Ashworth, the FA technical director, all 19 full-time coaches at St George’s Park were assigned World Cup teams to watch and research before the tournament. As the competition began and the list of likely opponents narrowed down, the FA was able to focus resources, but already there are reports on the likes of Senegal, Mexico and Germany which will never see the light of day.
By last night, Southgate and Holland will have had a report on what the Swedes do in terms of free-kicks, corners, goalkeeper distribution and build-up play, with video clips to support it. Not only that but they will have a suggested game plan. Ultimately, the approach that England take will be Southgate’s but he trusts the coaches at St George’s Park to the extent that their thinking will play a major part in his.
As well as the scouting, Southgate’s two senior team performance analysts are Steve O’brien and Mike Baker, who work under the auspices of Rhys Long, the FA’S head of insight and performance. Baker and O’brien are with the squad and work in conjunction with the scouting hub at St George’s Park, where much of the analysis work is done.
The performance analysts break up games the way a book is indexed, with every moment “coded” and sorted into a category and judged as to its significance to building up a big picture for the players. Then the challenge is to edit it into an impactful package that can be shown to the players without overwhelming them with too much information.
The scouting reports on Sweden go back to their qualifying, right up to the round-of-16 victory over Switzerland. How much of that Southgate chooses to show to his players will be his call, but all of the information will feed into how England train today and tomorrow and then what they discuss up to the moment the players walk out in the stadium in Samara for kick-off at 5pm local time (3pm BST).
Dan Micciche, the former England Under-16s coach who joined the FA in August 2013, a month before Southgate began as Under-21s coach and the FA’S head of coaching, championed the possession-based style now practised at all levels and says that the changes made by Ashworth and Southgate have been crucial to the progress in this World Cup.
“Dan [Ashworth] was clever in that he encouraged us to control the things the FA could control,” says Micciche, whose Under-16s team won the first youth tournament of the new FA regime in 2015. “We made sure our teams qualified for tournaments, then Dan pushed us to win them. Dan would ask us to get 100 per cent player release, by building strong relationships with the clubs, and that our planning was first class. That meant that each day’s training sessions, meetings, meal times, player one-to-ones and staff meetings were pre-scheduled.”
Baker worked with Southgate and Holland when the pair were in charge of the Under-21s and knows his boss well. Critically, Southgate believes in the approach. He was a technical observer for Uefa at Euro 2016 and for the Champions League the following season.
Micciche says that the FA’S approach to tournaments has been refined through its building of success with the youth sides, culminating in last summer’s flurry of trophies for the Under-17s, Under-19s and Under-20s.
“Mike and Steve know how to paint clear pictures for the players, using footage and graphics to support the messages they are being given. In a tournament, when time is short, that is absolutely critical.”