You can’t talk about England at Euro 2020 for five minutes without somebody complaining that Gareth Southgate’s approach was too negative, too timid. Too boring, ultimately.
Being England manager was described as “An Impossible Job” in the 1994 Channel 4 documentary of the same name – an Amazon Prime All of Nothing of its time – that was supposed to reveal the pressures of leading the national team but instead recorded for 18 months in painful detail England’s failure to qualify for the 1994 World Cup and Graham Taylor’s resignation.
Southgate, who has reached the semi-finals of the last World Cup and now for the first time in the nation’s history a European Championship final, has perhaps shown it’s not impossible, but that it’s undoubtedly An Unpleasant Job.
It turns out making history isn’t really good enough.
When is Hungary vs England?
- Date: Thursday 2 September
- Kick-off time: 7.45pm BST
- Venue: Puskas Arena, Budapest
- How to watch: ITV
- Live stream: ITV Hub
Not that Southgate particularly minds. He does not believe expectation has changed since his first game in charge as caretaker against Malta in a World Cup qualifier five years ago to his most recent one: the Euro 2020 final at Wembley against Italy. He is, it feels most of the time anyway, expected to win each of them with a five goal lead by half-time and at least double-figures by the end of 90 minutes. No matter the opponent. No matter the occasion. He is allowed a goalkeeper, but the rest of the outfield players must be attacking midfielders, wingers or forwards. And most of them should be Jack Grealish.
Southgate, naturally, takes a different, more measured, view to his (surprisingly many) critics. He points out, for example, that the most recent winners of the Champions League tend to play only three attacking players. As do Liverpool: winners of the Premier League in 2020, and the Champions League the previous year.
“I’m always looking at Chelsea who are the Champions League winners who play three attacking players, Liverpool play three attacking players normally. So what is required to win football matches at the very highest level?” Southgate said.
“Most teams will get four in if they played two wide players, a 10 and a 9, or three forwards and an attacking 8. I don’t see too many teams in world football who win things playing with five attacking players who have no tactical discipline, or who have no balance to the team.”
He’s also done a fair amount of research into the matter – Southgate being the first England manager in ages to treat the role as full-time job, away from the international breaks and tournament bursts if not travelling around watching potential England players then beavering away in the office with his coaches and analysts.
“Of course I understand people want to see exciting players,” he said. “I get that. I think our goalscoring record is pretty strong compared to other nations. The teams that have won tournaments in the past were averaging 12 goals in those tournaments. We had 11, Italy got 13 (at Euro 2020). We weren’t far away on that.
“I think we play good football. I think we build the game. We retain possession of the ball. We need to do that better in the biggest matches when we are pressed intensely, without a doubt. But we can’t get every attacking player on to the pitch and some of them still have a long way to go to being the finished article.
“We have got some players who have got us to a semi-final and a final who’ve proved themselves in the biggest games on the biggest stage. We’ve got lots of guys with good reputations who haven’t as yet necessarily won things with their clubs and who still have a lot to prove. That’s going to be interesting to watch all those journeys this year, with us and with their clubs.”
He is more concerned with keeping his players firmly rooted to the ground after four years of success than telling them to go out there and play like Brazil at the 1970 World Cup. “We’ve got to have the humility to embrace that reset button and make sure that mentally we’re not just swanning around like a team that got to a final and we’ve got some sort of entitlement,” he explained. “It’s back to the hard work and humility that got us to the final in the first place.”
Maybe the players aren’t the ones who need to keep their entitlement in check.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/38xtwH1
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