England must produce a playmaker like Modric to take next step forward

Gareth Southgate changed everything that could be changed, and tried to disguise the rest. Post-russia, he needs a playmaker and a cure for England’s habit of losing their grip on possession when good opponents put them on the rack.

With large parts of his mission accomplished, England’s manager turns to problems that are partly beyond his control. Coaching may stop his teams reverting to type, as they did after half-time against Croatia, but he has no engineering workshop in which to manufacture domineering midfielders, the archetype of which is Luka Modric.

All the good stuff is in the bank. The goodwill, the positivity, the rise, in Russia, of Jordan Pickford, John Stones, Kieran Trippier and Harry Maguire. The back of England’s team, commonly expected to be its weak point, ended up producing much of Southgate’s “core” (his word) for Euro 2020 and beyond. The front of his side, though, found its limits from 45 minutes on against Croatia and lacks a Modric due to historic production line imbalances.

Southgate namechecked Sir Trevor Brooking out here for encouraging him to dedicate himself to the Football Association’s national manifesto and age-group teams. Brooking’s great pronouncement from 2011 also flared back to life as England’s defeat by Croatia was being broken down in search of ways to improve. Praise for England’s march to Moscow can easily coexist with a hard-headed analysis of what they need to add to reach the final in 2020 or 2022 in Qatar.

Seven years ago, Brooking drew urgent attention to the congenital lack of “creativity and subtlety in the final third” in the English game. This creativity was evident in the work of Modric and Ivan Perisic, who kept the ball and worked the angles until England began to panic and launch balls from the back.

Brooking said in 2011: “That’s something we have to transform in academies at the ages of 12 and 13. We look at the safety pass too early.”

At the time, Brooking was extolling the promise of Jack Wilshere, who fell back after a promising start at Arsenal. “But we shouldn’t be looking at one Jack,” Brooking said. “You need 10 outfield players comfortable on the ball. I’m not sure you have to go the whole hog like Spain because, at times, they still lack a cutting edge. But if we can close the gap as we did a year ago in the Under-17s and we don’t lose our other strengths, then it’s about composure and technique. Seeing the pass, let alone delivering the pass, is the other issue, and that’s where we’ve revamped all the age groups.”

These observations still ring true and Southgate tried to get round this shortage by fielding two No8s – Dele Alli and Jesse Lingard – and honing England’s set-plays with considerable success. As he said on Wednesday: “We’ve managed to get a lot from this group of players, and play in a way that highlighted some of our strengths and hid some of our weaknesses.”

This is surely the crux. The “getting a lot from this group of players” is the foundation for the next four years. The “hiding some of our weaknesses” is the harder part, because it demands a next step: curing, rather than hiding. “We’ve played in a style that we wanted to play and come through so many barriers as a team that have been historic difficulties for us,” Southgate said. Comfortably the next “barrier” is the loss of composure and ball-retention when the heat is really on.

But Southgate has some big cards to play, starting with the Under-17 and Under-20 World Cup wins, which suggest a flow of international-class players for the next five to 10 years. Any list of potential senior England players would have to include Phil Foden, Jadon Sancho, Josh Onomah, Ryan Sessegnon, Ainsley Maitland-niles, Trent Alexander-arnold (already a cap-holder) and Rhian Brewster. In central midfield, Southgate can also look to Alex Oxlade-chamberlain, Lewis Cook and Harry Winks as possible Euro 2020 starters.

With an average of just over 26, England’s World Cup squad is already young. Improvement can be confidently predicted in most of the 30 or so players Southgate will have in mind for the Euros.

“Some of these big matches, you just have to go through them and live them to know how to react in the right moments in the right way,” the England manager said after the Croatia game. Southgate admitted England lacked “composure” when Croatia were in control. He said: “But we’ve learned from all of the things over the last couple of years and that’s a cruel lesson, but, blimey, we’ve come through so many important ones and, as I say, I’m really very proud of what they’ve done.”

Offstage, some of the more withering verdicts will keep this discussion rolling. Graeme Souness called England a “back-to-front team playing very basic football”. This reads like an overstatement, but there is certainly one hole in Southgate’s arsenal: an orchestrator, or controlling midfielder. Unless one emerges, it may take a cabinet of the willing or a tweak in the team shape to make the leap to finals.