WEMBLEY STADIUM — England need only avoid defeat against the Czech Republic on Tuesday to progress to the knockout stages. While that is a good thing, it is also a bad thing. England had the opportunity here to convince themselves and others that they really are a team worth watching.
Instead we are left to process a night when Scotland, a squad of lesser resource, got more things right than England. Boxed in by a fear of losing England played into Scotland’s man trap, wasting the first 45 minutes on needless caution.
The Scottish colonisation of London was not expected to extend to Wembley but did for 45 minutes of tireless application. The Tartan invasion is as much a part of the story as the game, more so in the modern era, a period that has seen Scotland’s place in the football space shrink alarmingly.
You would not have known it in an opening period when stout Scottish defence was the controlling feature of the game. Gareth Southgate must know that England cannot progress through this tournament by bagels alone. England were better in the second half, but any trepidation Scotland might have felt was long gone by then.
The first significant action was the meaty imprint of Lyndon Dykes left on Luke Shaw. Ten seconds in. Thus meeting football’s primal need to “put yourself about” or “let him know you’re there”. Shaw eventually peeled his form off the grass to resume the game.
The early stages had the flavour of the street skirmishes seen earlier in the day in the West End, Scotland sharpening the conflict with their hearty physicality. They would not cede control without an arm wrestle. McGinn’s barely legal lunge on Kalvin Phillips was another farmyard example, leading ironically to a free-kick for Scotland, awarded for retaliation.
If England were to make sense of this broiling cauldron the ball would have to move a lot quicker. While the teams continued to smash into each other England had little chance of teasing out the assumed technical advantage.
John Stones saw a header rebound off a post and Phil Foden shot wide, though from a position deemed offside. That was the sum of England’s threat in the opening half. The Scots in the audience picked up on the English frustration, belted out a few choruses of the anthem, communicating what the players already new, that Scotland were well in this contest.
There appeared an equal relationship between the energy the occasion had given Scotland and that which had drained from England. Southgate looked increasingly uneasy in his raincoat, and it wasn’t the weather troubling his soul.
England’s big cats Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling were just not in the game. Foden and Mason Mount struggled to make up the creative deficit, leaving England looking flat-footed and without a point of difference.
With Foden and Sterling repeatedly seeking space inside and both full-backs chained to a rigid back-four formation England had no width, which is exactly how Scotland wanted it. Watching England ping the ball sideways and backwards around the halfway line was recovery time for them.
The closest we came to a goal in the first half came from the boot of Scotland’s Stephen O’Donnell, whose volley Pickford saw late and did well to palm away. Steve Clarke’s 3-5-2 formation was effectively a sponge designed to absorb English possession. It never looked like leaking. A pound for each time England worked their way into the corners then all the way back again would have made a tidy bonus for Clarke.
It was clear England needed to change something, to inject urgency and pace into the second half. While we waited for Jack Grealish a sighting of the Yorkshire Pirlo was the requirement, to slip anchor and get up the pitch instead of duplicating Declan Rice. And to get the fullbacks in advance of the forwards.
Hey presto, the second period opened with Shaw getting to the byline, inducing hitherto unseen panic in the Scotland defence with Kieran Tierney getting to the ball marginally ahead of Kane’s boot. A chance from open play felt like the last Rolo in the packet, unspeakably exotic.
There was a moment too from Foden that required a rub of the eyes to persuade the senses that his feet really did move at the speed of light in working the ball out of defence to set England going again. This is Foden’s strength, intuiting space where there is none and flicking a switch like few can. The trouble is he was picked on the right wing, where he is far less effective.
When Grealish entered the fray with half an hour to go it was at Foden’s expense. Pity really. There should be scope for both. The game was entering a critical period, England pouring forward, Scotland working like dogs to repel the white wall.
There was an inevitability about the unfolding dynamic. The energy shift swinging heavily in England’s favour might have happened sooner had England been less concerned with not losing and more invested in winning.
Grealish was a torment to Scotland from the moment he appeared, willing to accept the ball, drop a shoulder and take his man on. This is the essence of the game and is lost to it when coaches choose prudence over risk. England can be so much better than this. Nay, must be.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3gEfNTS
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