Euros: England’s “nervy” opening win
Since Gareth Southgate took over as manager, England haven’t once dropped points in the opening game of a tournament, said David Hytner in The Guardian. And at Gelsenkirchen on Sunday, his team maintained that impressive record with a 1-0 victory over a determined Serbia. With Denmark having drawn against Slovenia, this result puts England in control of Group C: a win in their second game – which will take place against Denmark on Thursday – will guarantee they advance to the knock-out stages. Yet “the hordes of English in the Arena AufSchalke, and those back home”, are unlikely to have been reassured by England’s performance, said Jonathan Northcroft in The Times. Although Southgate’s team were excellent in the opening half-hour, during which Jude Bellingham put them in front with an emphatic header from a Bukayo Saka cross, the rest of the match was “nervy, exhausting, enervating”. England lost control of midfield, became increasingly defensive, and regularly gave the ball away. When Southgate reviews the tape of the match, not much of it will “make pretty viewing”.
But one thing, at least, did become clear, said Oliver Holt in the Daily Mail: the hype surrounding the 20-year-old Bellingham – voted the best player in Spanish football last season – is in no way unmerited. During the first half, “there were times when he looked as if he were playing Serbia on his own”. He seemed to be “everywhere”: one moment stealing the ball off Dušan Vlahovic deep in England’s half, the next turning Ivan Ilic inside out on the Serbian byline. He rode challenges and “ran through the opposition midfield”. So obvious was Bellingham’s superiority to everyone else on the pitch that it created a sense that two games were “taking place simultaneously”, said Barney Ronay in The Guardian. In one, Bellingham “basically did everything”, including scoring England’s winner; in the other, “everyone else got on with a slow-burn 0-0 over 90 minutes”.
There were a few other positives, said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph. Marc Guéhi was assured in defence, Declan Rice typically “industrious” in midfield, and Harry Kane “took one for the team” by remaining “up top” in an advanced role, rather than risking unbalancing England’s midfield by dropping to deeper positions. Still, the fall-off in intensity was alarming, said Oliver Brown in the same paper, not least because we’ve seen it all before: it was England’s willingness to “sit back” on early leads that cost them against Croatia in 2018, and against Italy in 2021. A team that wins international tournaments “knows when to go for the kill” – and certainly knows how to impose itself for more than just 30 minutes of a game. On Sunday, England were not that team.