ROUGH LANDING
Shaw injury blow as the English get a rude awakening
ENGLAND’S retreat from Moscow had been bathed in the soft light of heroic failure but last night at Wembley, one harsh blow after another bombarded their World Cup boys of summer and jolted Gareth Southgate and his team out of their reveries of Volgograd, Nizhny Novgorod and the Spartak Stadium and returned them to the brutal realities of the present day.
There was sickening head injury suffered by Luke Shaw in an accidental collision with Dani Carvajal two minutes after half time and the hush that settled over the Wembley crowd as medics crowded round his prone form for six minutes before he was carried away, motionless, on a stretcher, was a grave cause for concern that deflated what was left of the optimism that had accompanied the start of the match.
The match seemed inconsequential after that and a contest that had fizzed and buzzed in the first half simply faded away.
Spain had proved their superiority by then anyway. Suddenly, Russia seemed a long time ago. Even Southgate’s waistcoat was a casualty of the return to normality.
His three-piece suit was now just a plain old two-piece and his team seemed to catch the mood.
England did not play badly last night. It was just that Spain were better. And that moment in time, those four weeks in Russia when anything seemed possible, has been lost.
Southgate had asked his players to convince themselves that what they achieved at the World Cup was not a one-off.
They may yet do that but this was not the night for that. It was the opposite, actually. The last time England beat one of the big teams when it mattered was 16 years against Argentina in Sapporo. It is not a pretty statistic.
England opened the scoring in the 11th minute with the kind of goal their fans had longed for them to score in Russia, a goal from open play, carving an opposition apart with pace, precision and skill.
Kane was the key to it. He dropped deep into his own half to receive the ball and drew Ramos with him. Kane turned and fed the ball out to the left where Shaw was galloping up from left back. Shaw curled a perfect cross just beyond the reach of Nacho, and with Ramos still trying to make up his ground, Rashford clipped the ball past De Gea first time.
England held their lead for 120 seconds. Shaw deserves much of the credit for England’s goal but he was partly culpable for Spain’s equaliser.
He darted in to try to dispossess Carvajal and when Carvajal danced past him, England were stretched. Carvajal found Rodrigo and his pull back was hooked in by Saul Niguez. Wembley went quiet.
Spain grew and grew in assurance and it was no surprise when they took the lead just after half an hour.
Trippier gave away a free kick near the touchline and Thiago Alcantara whipped it in from the left. Stones, Kane and Rashford stood like statues as Rodrigo ran across them and tucked the ball past Pickford with his left foot.
A few minutes later, Rashford got to experience what opposition forwards have to suffer every week in the Premier League when they come up against Manchester United and De Gea. Rashford rose to meet a dinked cross from Lingard six yards out but De Gea produced the kind of brilliant, arching save that he makes routinely for his club.
England knew they needed to start the second half strongly but Shaw’s injury was so unsettling, it seemed to take all the energy out of the game for half an hour. It took until ten minutes before the end until they made another chance. Rashford burst through on goal but hit his shot too close to De Gea who scooped it away.
ENGLAND: Pickford, Gomez, Stones, Maguire; Henderson (Dier 64), Trippier, Lingaard, Alli, Shaw (Rose 53), Rashford (Welbeck 90), Kane. SPAIN: De Gea, Carvajal, Nacho, Ramos, Alonso, Martinez (87), Thiago Alacantra (Roberto 80), Busquets, Saul, Rodrigo, Iago Aspas (Asensio 68), Isco. REFEREE: Danny Makkelie.