SOUTHGATE CONFIDENT OF ENGLAND’S EVOLUTION
Soulless night in Croatia cannot hide prospect of bright England future
OLIVER HOLT on England
IN the quietness, sounds became more important. It was the sounds in the silence that you noticed at the HNK Stadium, the sounds that you don’t hear when there are fans inside an arena, the dissonant sounds that are professional football’s rhythm. Hidden from us, they emerged like the secrets to a language on a dark hillside above the Adriatic coastline on Friday night.
The harsh metallic clanking of football boots against a post as Jordan Pickford tried to batter imagined mud from his soles, the yells of rage from Jordan Henderson whenever a team-mate was fouled, the silence of Marcus Rashford, the dialogue between the referee and the players he called by their Christian names, the imprecations to ‘Raki’ as the Croats shouted instructions at Ivan Rakitic.
Football unplugged from its fans was every bit as strange and as soulless as you might imagine it to be when England played out their behind-closed-doors goalless Nations League draw with Croatia against a backdrop of empty stands pockmarked only by journalists, FA executives and a few sponsors’ guests. It was fire without warmth. It was music without melody.
Talent is talent and there is beauty in football whether it is played on Hackney Marshes or at Wembley Stadium but it needs an audience to contextualise it and legitimise it. Is Luka Modric, the world player of the year, still a superstar if there is no one there to sing his name?
Without its choir, Croatia-England was denuded of its passion but in a match that England dominated and would have won if Rashford had converted either of two gilt-edged chances, it was still its soundtrack that defined it. It was its soundtrack that identified England’s leaders. Henderson dominated that side of the match, cajoling, harangui ng and complaining his way through the game.
And it was its soundtrack that traced the continuing evolution of Gareth Southgate’s side into a team that insists on not being afraid of the ball and that held out hope of successes ahead by revealing the growing maturity and authority of some of its key personnel. Because beyond Henderson, the most vocal members of the England team that outplayed Croatia were Pickford and the central defensive partnership of John Stones and Harry Maguire, the key to a switch to a 4-3-3 system that was a marked departure for Southgate.
After the match, Southgate talked candidly about the reasons for the move away from the pragmatic 3-5-2 formation that buttressed his side and pushed them all the way to the World Cup semis. He made it clear that the burgeoning assurance of Stones, Maguire and rightback Kyle Walker had given him the foundation to blood new young players like Jadon Sancho and, in time, James Maddison and Mason Mount, further up the field.
‘In the simplest terms,’ Southgate said, ‘ without the ball, we don’t cover the pitch quite as well in a 3-5-2 system. So we weren’t able to get pressure high up the field and the last two or three opponents have pinned our back five back with three forwards, or two wing backs and a forward. That meant we were getting a bit overloaded in midfield.
‘Tonight, we were able to get better pressure on their back four and better pressure on their midfield.
‘But we also felt going into last summer that a lot of the defence was very new and the comfort of the five gave us some stability to build the game as we were learning the style we wanted to play.
‘That also allowed for some mistakes that we felt, in players’ first few games of international football, looked like happening. So I think somebody like Maguire now has established himself. He looks like a top player. So that allows us to go to the four, as well as other things.’
Southgate is right about Maguire. He was the pick of the England team against Croatia, with Stones not far behind. Maguire’s distribut i o n was i mpressive but hi s positional awareness, his authority and his composure under pressure were all signs of his emergence as one of the game’s most commanding centre-halves.
He and Stones and their confidence on the ball increasingly set the tone for Southgate’s England and they were the key to a performance against their hosts that was better than anything they produced at the World Cup last summer.
This is not a side that is resting on its laurels, content to bask in the success of reaching the semi-finals in Russia. This is a team that knows, despite that success, it is far from being one of the top four teams in the world. But they have a hunger to evolve into something more accomplished.
Southgate pointed to the selection of Leicester’s Ben Chilwell at leftback to illustrate that. Chilwell made his full debut in Rijeka and Southgate was impressed with the fact that, like Maguire and Stones, he had not been afraid to give instructions to more experienced players further forward.
‘We recognise that after what we achieved in Russia, you have to keep progressing and advancing,’ Southgate said. ‘For me the most important thing is we build for two years’ time and the European Championships. We could live hand to mouth and pick teams that are maybe more experienced for a game like tonight. We could have played one of our more experienced right-backs at left-back and not given Chilwell the opportunity, but in doing what we did you find and discover a player who looks very comfortable at this level.’
Some England fans, to t heir immense credit, managed to find a vantage point high on the wooded hillside above the stadium. They could only see two thirds of the pitch but they made themselves heard and were at least rewarded with the consolation of waves of appreciation from Stones and Harry Kane at the final whistle.
Had they been admitted, they would have been housed in the caged end behind one of the goals, known as the Guantanamo Stand by visiting fans because of its forbidding character. Hajduk Split fans complete the picture by visiting wearing orange jumpsuits.
England supporters were spared that, at least. Instead, from their hillside, they caught glimpses of a team doing its best to break free.