Spurs’ flying full-backs hold the key to making England’s midfield diamond sparkle
In-form duo Walker and Rose must continue to press high up the pitch and provide width in attack
F rance have the relative veteran Bacary Sagna who, at 33, is still younger than Patrice Evra on the opposite side. Germany have made do with Benedikt Höwedes. Vieirinha went AWOL for Portugal at the crucial moment against Iceland. Belgium have drafted in Laurent Ciman, now playing in Major League Soccer, for their first game.
Croatia’s Darijo Srna has 132 caps and is still hanging on. Finding a rightback who can do all the things asked of him in that position in the modern game is not a simple task, but they are out there if you look hard enough.
A scout at Euro 2016 working with a blank canvas and a generous budget would sit up and take notice of Everton’s Seamus Coleman in the Republic of Ireland side, so too the Napoli right-back Elseid Hysaj, who plays for Albania. The big guns are Poland’s Lukasz Piszczek of Borussia Dortmund and Juanfran of Spain and Atlético Madrid. One might also find it hard to ignore Kyle Walker, 73kg of inked-up Yorkshire muscle deployed down England’s right flank.
There are times when Walker’s pace and power can make him look like the proverbial express train going through a local station while the rest of us are counting down the milliseconds until he runs out of pitch. Yet, in the second half on Thursday in Lens, it was his relentless attacking down the right side that was one of Wales’s chief concerns, even if, eventually, the final, critical stages of both England’s goals took place in the left channel.
If Roy Hodgson sticks with the team who finished Thursday’s win for tomorrow’s final Group B game, against Slovakia, then it would be hard to understate the importance to the net attacking effort of Walker and his Tottenham Hotspur teammate Danny Rose on the opposite flank. The midfield diamond that finally saw the England team prevail over Wales has, like all formations, its advantages and its compromises but, in terms of width, it is the full-backs who carry the burden.
With the team out of possession, Walker and Rose are obliged to do the job that has occupied English fullbacks since the position was invented: getting out wide to get tight on the winger or dropping in narrow to help the centre-half. With the team in possession, England go through the modern transformation – their centrehalves split, Eric Dier drops in between them and the two full-backs are launched high up the pitch to fulfil the second part of the day job.
Walker had a sticky start against Wales but by the second half his confidence had grown and the bombardment was in full flight. If and when England make it out of the group stages, then he and Rose will have to face greater threats than Wales were able to pose for most of the game, even with Gareth Bale in the side.
Against Slovakia tomorrow, and beyond, Walker and Rose are also central to the England attacking game-plan.
Rose is a lower-profile attacker than Walker, although he has the legs to get in advanced positions and started out life as a winger before he was finally converted into a left-back in a loan season at Sunderland two years ago. He is another straight-talking son of Yorkshire, his first senior cap coming only in March, but he has won the race for one of the most hotly contested positions in the England squad ahead of Ryan Bertrand, Leighton Baines and, further back in the queue, Kieran Gibbs.
The focus on what England have borrowed from Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs refit has so far focused on Harry Kane, Dier and Dele Alli, but if those two are three crucial vertebrae through the centre of the team, then Walker and Rose are the broad shoulders on either side. The two fullbacks have been beneficiaries of the Poch-effect at White Hart Lane, and for England they are fundamental to the way the team press high up the pitch.
When the statistics for the furthest distance covered by individuals was flashed up on-screen at the end of the game against Wales, it was notable that the only non-Spurs man in England’s top five was Wayne Rooney in second place, behind Alli and ahead of Rose, Dier and Walker, in that order.
This time last year, Rose was still not an England international, while on the opposite side, Nathaniel Clyne was England’s first-choice right-back and Walker was so far out of the picture that he was only a late addition to the squad for the final two qualifiers against Estonia and Lithuania in October.
Yet Hodgson, the man routinely accused of misguided loyalty to individuals, has watched from afar and quietly promoted his two Spurs fullbacks above Clyne and Bertrand.
Whether Walker and Rose are the men for the World Cup in Russia in 2018 remains to be seen. Luke Shaw will be back by the start of next season to put pressure on the latter, and in another two years there may yet be more progress from the likes of Matt Targett and Ben Chilwell. Walker, the older of the two, missed the last World Cup finals with injury. What matters for now is that they are the men in form.
With a midfield diamond formation now the clear choice to be the one England take forward in France, Hodgson needs his full-backs to perform. In the past, England teams have had a tendency to ask their fullbacks to regard attacking as an optional extra, but this time Walker and Rose have to defend and attack – and they have never been so central to England’s chances of success.
In possession the side transform, Dier drops between the two centre-halves and the full-backs are freed