So England have reached another semi-final, four months after the World Cup. What a cruel, wonderful beast football is. What a fascinating spectacle the Uefa Nations League has already become.
Down and out after conceding to Croatia against the run of play, needing only a win at this point to both avoid relegation and top their group, England scored two late goals, including a sliding winner from Harry Kane, to avoid a first relegation in their history and progress to the last four of Uefa’s barmy new competition.
The Premier League, which has become known as the best league in the world, may finally have some competition. Uefa’s vastly complex system is International Football 2.0. It’s fast and revolving and has many moving parts, whirring and humming.
Top or relegated
In the space of three months England have played the World Cup runners up Croatia twice and Spain three times (once in a friendly) and in this final game of the group stage, each of the three teams could qualify for next year’s semi-finals, finish second or suffer relegation to the Group B mini-leagues, when it starts all over again two years’ time. An international competition for the social media age of attentions relentlessly jumping in alternate directions.
Even when Croatia took the lead, it meant England could no longer finish second, facing either relegation in defeat or a score draw, and topping the group had they turned it around.
Judging from Wembley’s attendance the competition hasn’t quite gripped the nation yet, despite the match’s significance. An improvement on the USA friendly a few days before, which was desperately marketed as a Wayne Rooney farewell match to put on an extra 20,000 tickets with the venue set to be half empty without his name, but not the draw you would expect from a match with some many different outcomes.
Revert to long throws
A deflection off the knee would’ve been the cruelest way to for England to suffer relegation. Andrej Kramaric looked as though he had dallied too long on the ball in a rare Croatia attack 57 minutes in, until he eventually released an effort, it struck Eric Dier and looped beyond Jordan Pickford.
But this England team have had it drummed into them by manager Gareth Southgate how to manage big matches and big teams and they started reverting to long throws and, by the end, holding the ball in the corner — what England should really be about, surely.
If there was any criticism of England during the World Cup, it was that they were slightly limited plans. Since then, Southgate has varied the formation and approaches and so it was that they equalised from the long throw, of all routes. Joe Gomez launched one in, with 12 minutes remaining, it squirmed through the packed penalty area to Kane at the back post, whose poke was blocked, but tapped in by substitute Jesse Lingard.
Grand plan working?
Still plummeting to Group B, Kane stretched for the winner, with five minutes remaining.
It feels risky to put this in writing but is this… is this Gareth Southgate’s grand plan working? England actually deserved the result.
Had Raheem Sterling been even a centimetre taller they would’ve taken the lead in the 16th minute. Fabian Delph dribbled through three Croatia players and chipped a ball over the top, it bounced into the path of Sterling’s run but sat up too high, allowing Croatia goalkeeper Lovre Kalinic to jump outside his area and head clear. Even then, the ball dropped to Kane, whose shot towards the ‘keeper-less goal was blocked by Tin Jedvaj’s head. The ball returned to the England striker, but his second effort towards the bottom left corner was saved this time by Kalinic sprinting back and stretching out his leg.
Leicester City left-back Ben Chilwell is excelling at the moment and his bouncing first-time hit, when the ball came out from a corner, was awkwardly pushed away by Kalinic, while Ross Barkley struck a dipped volley — from Chilwell’s deep cross — which dropped just wide of the right post.
England players were sensing each other’s runs, central midfielders were controlling the midfield, they were dominating a top nation.
Somehow, Delph, who captained the side against America last week, played as though he had been binge-watching highlights reels of Xavi and Andres Iniesta. The Yorkshireman played more like Luka Modric than the Croatian midfielder.
Marcus Rashford kept driving and driving at Croatia’s defenders as though he was back on the playground at Ashton-on-Mersey, the school which has been educating Manchester United’s youngsters for two decades, his performances for Southgate completely at odds with those for Jose Mourinho. If he is the quiet, cowed child who hides in the corner at this club, for England he his up on the stage in assembly, flashing jazz hands every five minutes.
In fact, all England players appear to be inspired to their best, most flamboyant performances when they pull on an England shirt, these days.
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