Jonathan Wilson
England’s tactical dilemma
Major tournaments are very rarely won by the most attacking team. International football is, of necessity, less complex than club football. Managers have far less time to prepare their players and their squad will often change radically from one meet-up to the next. So functionality prevails. It’s simply not possible to impose the sort of complex attacking systems that dominate at the highest level of club football, and that’s why international sides can often seem so slow and lacking in fluency, particularly when faced with a massed defence.
In turn that’s why frustration so rapidly sets in. An audience watches a national team struggle to take apart a disciplined opponent and immediately the call is for whichever creator happens to be in form to be introduced, for the side to be built around them, despite the fact that no top-level side has been built around one player for at least 30 years. Add in the fact that Gareth Southgate has been in charge of England for four years now, a period after which familiarity has seemingly begun to breed impatience among both media and public, and the conditions are in place for a largely self-induced meltdown this summer.
At the World Cup, England were solid enough with their back three, clever with set plays and had in Harry Kane a forward who, despite being out of sorts, kept scoring goals. The draw was kind, and often that is enough. Southgate’s two obvious achievements were in generating the quasi-club atmosphere he had seen inspire Wales at Euro 2016 and, though his obvious decency and dignity, making England a far less unlikable side. He needlessly invited pressure late on against Colombia and was slow to react when England lost control of midfield against Croatia, but broadly speaking Russia 2018 was a success for England.
To Southgate’s credit, he kept evolving and switched to a 4-3-3, which both allowed England to make better use of their fleet of quick attacking wide players and gave them an extra body in central midfield to combat the sort of issues that had undermined them against Croatia. That brought a memorable win away to Spain in the Nations League – even if, having raced into a 3-0 lead, England were clinging on by the end. In their ten games in 2019, England scored 38 goals, but they also looked very vulnerable defensively in defeats to the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, and the 5-3 win over Kosovo.
Defensively vulnerable sides do not win major international tournaments; it’s 50 years since the World Cup was won by a team that was not fundamentally pragmatic. So in 2020, Southgate returned to something more functional and reinstated his back three. At its most basic level, the 3-4-3 he has adopted makes sense for national sides. The three central defenders protected by two deep-lying midfielders provide a
Defensively vulnerable sides do not win major international tournaments... so in 2020, Southgate returned to something more functional and reinstated his back three
naturally solid base, while the wide forwards have latitude without their movement much disrupting the defensive shape.
In terms of offering solidity, it has largely worked. In eight games in 2020, England conceded just four goals. Two were penalties, one of which probably wasn’t a foul; one was a direct freekick that wasn’t a foul; and the other squirmed in via two deflections, a touch off the keeper and the post. But there has been a corresponding diminution of England’s attacking prowess.
Southgate, it’s fair to say, is still working on the balance. Against Belgium at Wembley in October, England in the first half suffered a problem similar to that faced against Croatia in the World Cup as they were overrun in midfield. Southgate has been criticised for a failure to make tactical in-game changes, but there he pulled Mason Mount deeper, advanced the wing-backs and solved the problem as England had the better of the second half. That versatility, perhaps, is why he rates Mount so highly.
Can he afford a more creative player deep in midfield, as he tried by using Mount there against the Republic of Ireland and Iceland in November? Jack Grealish is in form and has become something of a cause celebre, but by playing him on the left Southgate loses a player whose natural game is to run beyond Kane when he drops deep. That could perhaps be balanced by using a more direct, quicker player on the right (Raheem Sterling? Jadon Sancho?) rather than Mount who started there away against Belgium, but does that then mean there’s no place for Marcus Rashford? And where can he fit Phil Foden, who excelled against Iceland?
The nature of international football, and probably especially in this most exhausting of seasons, means a lot of those decisions may be made for him by injury or other external factors. But at the moment, England have a relatively solid base and a range of differing options both in midfield and either side of Kane. From that point of view, if the recent Nations League is regarded as preparation for the Euros, the negativity is difficult to understand.