It had been Gareth Southgate’s Achilles heel for a while.
For all his hard work changing the culture of England camps, gelling together players from rival clubs when in years gone by they had disliked one another, transforming the relationship between fans and the squad, making them fall in love once more, reaching the World Cup semi-finals, there was one thing that bugged him. England could not beat the top-ranked nations.
Even at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, while they progressed deep into the tournament they lost all their matches against nations expected to beat them. Defeats to Belgium in the group and third-place playoff, defeat to Croatia in the last four. Their wins came against Tunisia, Panama, Colombia and Sweden.
That has to change if England want to win anything.
“One thing I’d say is we are not scared of any team we come up against,” Marcus Rashford, who starred at that World Cup, said. “We’re working hard and in football that’s just the baseline, you have to work hard and believe in yourself and your team-mates. If you don’t do that you may as well forget about winning.
“We’re not scared of any other teams. Are there teams that have played well [at Euro 2020] and impressed us? Yeah definitely. I think there have been some strong performances, some performances that make you sit back and enjoy the game of football.
“Going forward, if we are going to win the tournament we are going to have to play against the best teams in the tournament. We want to look forward to those games. We don’t want to be scared of playing against these teams.
“Especially since Russia, we have exposed ourselves to more of these big games against the best teams, the biggest nations and some of the best players in the world and we’ve managed to deal with it and win a lot more of the games than before the World Cup. We’ve managed to show ourselves better in the bigger games since the World Cup.”
Part of the problem is that England tended to waltz through qualifying groups against inferior sides only to be eliminated at the first sniff of tougher opponents in knockout stages.
In the build-up to Russia, Southgate tried to mitigate the problem by playing harder friendlies. They drew with Germany and Brazil – back in 2017 – then eked out a win against Holland, then drew with Italy. The introduction of the Nations League helped. They beat Croatia and Spain with impressive performances, starting to instil a belief that England were not destined to exit World Cups and Euros at the first sign of difficulty.
The controlled Croatia victory in England’s opening game of Euro 2020 provided a glimmer of hope, although they are far from the Croatia side who were runners-up at the last World Cup.
In Russia, as England cruised through their first two games there was much debate about whether to ‘throw’ the final game against Belgium to finish second in the group, thus securing easier passage through the knockout stages. As it was, they were comfortably beaten by Belgium.
The same stands now, where finishing second would avoid last 16 opponents from the group including France, Portugal or Germany, and would likely pair them with Sweden or Poland. Yet win against Scotland on Friday and England will probably top the group.
“We want to win every game, it’s as simple as that really,” Rashford said. “We’re not thinking about coming second to get an easier run or anything like that. We want to approach every game with the mentality that we want to win and that’s always been the mentality of the players and staff here. Not much is going to change in that regard.”
And, anyway, try stopping them against rivals Scotland. “As players you want to play in the biggest, most historical games.
“Through our careers, this is going to be up there with one of the biggest games that we play, one of the games we remember for the rest of our careers.
“For me, I look back at the last time I played against them – the atmosphere, the build up, it was unique. To do it in the Euros is a moment we are looking forward to.”
More from i on Euro 2020
- In praise of Emma Hayes, the best pundit at Euro 2020 so far
- Eriksen collapse has thrown a spotlight on football’s relentless thirst for more
- ‘Yorkshire Pirlo’ showing he has perfect blend of silk and steel to be a star
- Where Schick’s strike against Scotland ranks among greatest Euros goals
- How to watch every Euro 2020 match on TV and online in the UK
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3gCW6ub
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