Chilwell unspectacular but steady on ‘bizarre’ night
LEICESTER City left-back Ben Chilwell collected his eighth England cap in a frenzied 5-3 win over Kosovo on Tuesday night, writes Jordan Blackwell.
Returning to the side in place of Danny Rose, Chilwell played 90 minutes in an entertaining affair at Southampton’s St Mary’s Stadium as England maintained their 100 per cent record in Euro 2020 qualifying.
While England’s performance was characterised by blistering, clinical attacks and sloppy mistakes in defence, Chilwell himself produced a steady display, neither guilty at the back nor influential going forward.
The 22-year-old made confident strides forward with the ball but his crossing routinely let him down.
Defensively, he was rarely caught out of position, despite the end-to-end nature of the match. England went behind after just 34 seconds when former City loanee Michael Keane saw a pass to Harry Maguire intercepted, Valon Berisha firing Kosovo into a shock lead.
Keane made amends as he nodded a corner into Raheem Sterling’s path for an eighth-minute equaliser.
Southgate’s side then turned on the style, rampaging to a 5-1 halftime advantage with strikes by Harry Kane, a Mergim Vojvoda own goal and two quickfire goals by Sancho.
In the second half, Kosovo threatened a famous fightback as Berisha showed composure to score his second before Vedat Muriqi was felled in the box by Maguire, the striker picking himself to slot away the penalty.
In the end, England saw out of the victory comfortably, but the defensive performance left Southgate puzzled.
“Well, bizarre really,” Southgate said of the performance. “The outstanding features and the poor features are apparent to everybody, so we don’t need to get the video out and go back through it.
“Poor individual mistakes, a poor start to the game.
“The small period after half-time: ridiculous mistakes, poor decisions, lack of covering back.”