TIME UP FOR PHIL AND HIS LIONESSESS

Phil Neville would appear to be reaching the end with england’s women’s team. he has a meeting with the FA next week, but there is growing belief he has gone as far as he can. Good luck to whoever succeeds him — and it should be a woman — because old problems remain. england are a poor side, technically, and it is increasingly catching up with them. They are now in a position familiar to england’s men. They beat every team they are expected to beat and lose to every team it is feared have their measure. england’s women have lost seven of their last 11 games and have won once in 11 matches against teams ranked in the world’s top eight. This reckoning was predictable given that england’s relative success in tournaments — they have reached the semi-finals in the last three — was built on the Mark Sampson years of athleticism and power. england were a good long-ball team; they hit the channels, chased and competed physically. Yet fitness and strength can be easily adopted and replicated. Technique, not so much. So while the rest of the world has learned to match england’s physicality, england’s passing game falls short of their major rivals. it was the same for england’s men, who for many decades were considered technically inferior. There are individual exceptions, obviously, such as lucy Bronze (above), but england seem to be falling behind. even in their sole victory over Japan at the SheBelieves Cup, england’s chances were mainly the work of opposition errors, rather than their own creative wit. This was a sobering tournament for Neville and his players. The loss to the United States, the No 1 team in the world, was to be expected but Spain are 13th, seven places behind england in the rankings. And the last calendar year has seen defeats by Germany (2nd), Sweden (5th), Canada (8th), Brazil (9th), Norway (12th) and New Zealand (23rd). Whether the change comes sooner or later, Neville’s successor has an increasingly difficult task. There is a lot expected of england’s women these days — not least because of the general insistence on using a self-aggrandising FA brand name — lionesses — but standards are stagnating. This is not entirely Neville’s failure. Rather, until england’s passing improves, it was always going to happen.