What if this isn’t the end of times? What if there is a plan? What if Gareth Southgate is the only person in England to have realised football will only come home if it’s first tortured and made to suffer grave indignities?
Tuesday’s 0-0 draw with Slovenia was football at its most vapid, the sort of game that turns entire generations to cricket.
This was football that makes you wonder what you’re having for dinner, makes you remember that time you waved to someone who was actually waving at the person behind you. It was a deeply unpleasant soup of apathetic nothingness.
But conflating the misery Southgate-ball forces you to feel with its footballing merits makes everything appears worse than it actually is. Yes, England have an attacking lineup with five of the 10 best players in the world who can make you forget how time or space is ever created on a football pitch. Yes, they have scored just twice in three group stage games. Yes, they are at times utterly joyless and meaningless and seemingly aimless.
But they have also conceded just once (1); a 30-yard, pinpoint missile inches from hitting the post or Jordan Pickford. The greatest concerns pre-tournament were over the defensive implications of Marc Guehi‘s forced inclusion, but he has been among England’s best performers (2). Pickford collected his record 11th major tournament clean sheet against Slovenia (3). There are things this side does well, they’re just not the ones which trigger your dopamine receptors.
Perhaps most reassuringly, we’ve been here before and it ended up okay (4). At Euro 2020, England may have finished their group with seven points, but they also scored just two goals (5). There was a stalemate with Scotland so monotonously miserable I’ve trauma-blocked it out of my mind.
Across three group-stage games three years ago, England had just six shots on target, five fewer than they’ve managed in Germany (6). The press were calling for Harry Kane’s head then too, having not had a shot on target in the first two games. It not only could be worse, it has been (7).
The official ITV highlights of that Scotland game included the entire pre-kick-off kneel. There are 35 minutes between the first and second England chances interesting enough to feature. The only shot on target came from 25 yards. And three weeks later, Southgate and co were still in the final (8), still just a penalty from the trophy. There is a path to glory here once again. Just ask Portugal, who won in 2016 having drawn all three group games (9).
We all want to believe that some romantic footballing ideal is what wins tournaments, that if you release enough handbrakes you find milk and honey and enlightenment and the goals never stop.
But, of course, that just isn’t true (10). The team which wins major tournaments is almost always the one with the fewest obvious flaws, the strongest collective identity, the ability and experience to hold it together when required. International tournaments are remembered for the teams who had fun trying to win and are actually won by the teams who know the only joy that really matters is that derived from becoming champions.
England could now win Euro 2024 without scoring another goal (11). Of course that won’t happen, but even if it did, fans should now have at least a modicum of confidence in the players’ penalty-taking abilities (12).
And for all the questions raised by the Slovenian ennui parade, there were the faint shadows of some answers. Kobbie Mainoo’s second-half was the most convincing audition this tournament to partner Declan Rice in midfield (13), already English football’s perennial modern problem.
Cole Palmer and Anthony Gordon both showed that, whether they start or not, they can and will impact games when given the opportunity (14). Kane is gradually shaking whatever lingering injury or hex he began the tournament with. Luke Shaw appears close to rescuing Kieran Trippier from left-back purgatory (15).
And so now to Slovakia, a draw far kinder than England could ever have imagined (16) but equally one which may cause similar feats of overwhelming accidie.
The Netherlands would have been ideal opposition, a side with the inverse problems, a bizarre impressionist painting of a once-great footballing nation, full of positionless forwards who float from irrelevance to total absence and theoretically great centre-backs who always appear mildly concussed.
Here’s the irony of this all – England have finally developed a style ideal for matching the biggest international teams but now can’t get a game against any of them. This is the tenuous benefit of having no great footballing identity aside from a vague pragmatism, repressed fatalism and irrepressible arrogance; you can exist simply in opposition to things (17).
Southgate has always struggled against sides outside the top 20 of the Fifa world rankings, low-block teams which aim to frustrate, but that’s largely because he shares their philosophy. When both sides prioritise defence and stability, you unsurprisingly end up with defensive yet stable exhibitions of non-life.
But however soul-crushing it may be, victory back in Gelsenkirchen against Slovakia would then set up a quarter-final against a rank Italy side or a Switzerland team which couldn’t even beat Scotland (18). Any nation that makes the semi-finals will be worth the place, but England will still avoid France, Germany, Portugal and Spain until the final, if they make it that far (19).
As Pink Floyd once sung, hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way. This time, Southgate’s miserable men might just be able to hang on in silent, sullen desperation all the way to the Henri Delaunay trophy. And really, if you think about it, was it ever going to happen any other way?
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/ErKXMv4
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