England Are Out Of The Euros Because They Had No Idea What They Were Doing
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: An English squad full of talent, hyped up as possible winners ahead of a major tournament, stumble through the group stages and fall to a weaker opponent in a hideously unimaginative performance, leading to a managerial resignation and a full-scale media slaughtering of the ‘over-paid, under-passionate’ players. To be honest, change a couple of details about who they played and when they were eliminated and that could be any tournament over the last 50 years… excluding, of course, the 1974, 1978 and 1990 World Cups and the 1984 and 2008 European Championships. You know, the ones they didn’t qualify for.
Euro 2016 was supposed to be different for England… which makes it about the same as every other failure. A young squad and a manager with tournament experience. Lots of exciting, creative players. A feel-good sense of momentum after the fantastic run of Leicester City (and Tottenham Hotspur) this season.
And it might have been different had they not stupidly thrown away what would have been a hard-fought victory over Russia in their first game. They then utilised the bench to come from behind to beat Wales before making six changes for a tame 0-0 with Slovakia. Then they lost to Iceland. One win, two draws and a loss. Four goals scored, four conceded. That leaves Roy Hodgson with three wins in major tournaments from 11 matches, a record that won’t be added to now, Hodgson having resigned immediately after the game. When exactly he found the time to write his prepared resignation speech is a question of much debate.
I hate lumping the blame on Roy Hodgson because he’s a likeable dude and a good manager who deserves better than that. But he was a step outside of his range at this level and in this particular age of international football. At a time when structure and formation are so important, Hodgson’s England were utterly directionless, relying on individual players over team system and being completely shown up for that by an Iceland team with a fraction of the talent but a plan to get the best out of them. It’s the same player-first approach that England has relied on for at least three decades and it didn’t even work then. In 2016, it never had a chance.
Forget that Hodgson was the highest paid manager at the Euros, he was also the oldest. And to his credit he could see where the problems lay, he just lacked the ability to do anything about it. He tried, though. Despite cruising through the qualifiers with a perfect record (which was very overrated given they had an especially weak group – Switzerland their only rivals, really), he changed up their approach with a 4-3-3 formation at the main event. Problem being he’d already selected a squad that included only one genuine winger in Raheem Sterling. Andros Townsend, a clearly limited player but one in supreme form for Newcastle late in the Premier League season, was left at home.
Look at the way they struggled to break down teams. Every one of the four they played were pretty deep-set and allowed England to control the ball. Which they did to little effect. Rooney sprayed the ball around from midfield while the fullbacks travelled tirelessly up and down the flanks but as soon as a ball went into the box it came straight back out. The only three players that brought any imaginative movement were Adam Lallana, Marcus Rashford and Daniel Sturridge. Lallana is a notoriously hard worker who runs himself into the ground after an hour - he played the full 90 in less than half of his Liverpool appearances this season while Sturridge’s movement tends not to complement the guys around him. Call him a selfish player but there’s nothing wrong with that, lots of strikers are, though it tends to work best not playing such a guy out wide. Meanwhile Rashford was obviously a victim of his own age, there’s no other reason to explain Hodgson waiting until the final four minutes to bring him on vs Iceland – that run down the left that earned a corner was about the only time an Englishman got in behind the Iceland defence all game, other than the Sterling run that won the penalty.
Harry Kane was awful, yes. He also had no idea what he was doing. Spurs play in a way that is meant to create as many chances for Kane as possible. When he drifts deeper, a player like Erik Lamela will himself drift inwards to keep the defence pegged back. Christian Eriksen will wander all over from the left in order to drag defenders and pick passes. Same goes for the disaster that was Raheem Sterling’s tournament. He had trouble fitting into the City team in his first season but just wait and see how good he is under Pep Guardiola playing with an actual idea of what his positioning ought to be. Wayne Rooney can be a great midfielder, don’t let one game fool you. But he only began playing there late in the club season and four games in a week (one as sub) were probably too much. England had all sorts of attacking threats in the squad but none of them knew how to play with each other.
Why did Hodgson change the formation? Pretty clearly it was his way of ceding to the calls to get as many of those attacking threats in the team as possible – a first step on the path to having Vardy, Sturridge, Kane and Rashford all on the park at once with Gary Cahill hovering forward as well in the dying stages against Iceland.
That’s an insight right there into the mentality that led to all those bloody ridiculous team selections. His strongest team was the one that played against Russia, that was his first impression, with Kane flanked by Sterling and Lallana. If only they’d have taken their chances in that opening game, come away with a 3-0 win, then who knows what might have been the case to follow? Instead it was a typical England early-tournament stumble from which they never quite recovered their footing. That XI was fine but Hodgson’s subs were a disaster – another example of a manager not working to any script.
To be fair, it came from his players not taking their chances in what would be their best performance of the tournament – they got worse with every game. It took 73 minutes for Eric Dier’s free kick to give them the lead, a well-deserved one but it should have come way earlier. Five minutes later Hodgson brought on Jack Wilshere for Wayne Rooney, presumably a defensive move and yet Wilshere played higher forward than Rooney did. With three minutes to go Sterling came off too, James Milner replacing him. A clever move would have been to put James Vardy on to run in behind the Russian defence as they pressed forward for an equaliser. Instead he made two defensive moves and invited them into their half. Deep into injury time Russia scored with only their second shot on target.
It was an unchanged team to face Wales but that unchanged team was abysmal. Sterling missed an open goal and Joe Hart screwed up an admittedly wicked Gareth Bale free kick to see them head into the sheds down 1-0. Two half time subs saw Sturridge and Vardy replace Kane and Sterling and it was far better. Each of them scored as England came back to win 2-1. Rashford looked sharp in his 17 minutes.
And then, for the sake of resting them, Hodgson made six changes for Slovakia and his team once again dominated for very little offensive threat. 0-0 it was, England spurning the chance to top the group and get themselves onto the good side of the draw. Again, England had more than enough shots to have won that thing. 27 of them in fact. That they didn’t score highlights how bad their finishing was all tournament, because while shot totals can be deceiving (lots of long efforts, blocked shots, etc.), within 27 of them you’d expect a couple goals. I don’t know what the deal was here, Lallana and Sterling are particularly rubbish finishers but Kane and Vardy were the Premier League’s top scorers last season. I will say that finishing tends to be at its best when it’s done by instinct and muscle memory. The more you think about it, the worse it gets. Pressure and self-doubt will do that to you.
Resting players against Slovakia is one thing. England don’t have a winter break (as is becoming increasingly more discussed) and many of these players ran themselves exhausted over their club stuff. Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs team has had a reputation for that, just look at how poorly they finished the season once a determined title run collapsed. Kane, Dier, Walker, Rose and Alli were all key members of this England squad. Dier started every game.
As bad as Jordan Henderson and Jack Wilshere were against Slovakia, they were still serving the purpose of resting Rooney and Alli. Hodgson had made his decision not to start those other guys, to give them a few extra days of recovery. Maybe that would come at the expense of the top spot but the ones who played did enough to win that game. So subbing on Rooney, Alli and Kane – all guys supposedly rested (though you could argue Kane was dropped after being upstaged by Vardy/Sturridge vs Wales) – made absolutely zero sense. Where was Ross Barkley? That lad has the best shot from outside the box in this squad, give him a chance to unleash a few against a defence lodged in the penalty area.
Barkley and Everton teammate John Stones were the only outfield players unused at Euro 2016. If it hadn’t been for Roberto Martinez, Stones probably would have been starting at CB. A proper shame that, because as a defender with some actual skill on the ball, he’d have worked better with Gary Cahill or Chris Smalling than those two did with each other. Not every defence needs to have the technique of Spain’s Ramos/Pique pairing but the blueprint is the old Vidic/Ferdinand dynamic with one tackler and one ball-player. Because of the teams they played, Smalling and Cahill weren’t often caught out but that’s a duo of convenience and little more.
As for Joe Hart, well… he’s had his ups and downs for Manchester City and while he was certainly still England’s number one – dropping him for the Euros would have been a huge drama – he probably isn’t any more. At least not without his doubters. There’s an argument to be made that every goal the English conceded at this tournament was in some way his fault. Jack Butland is currently injured and Fraser Forster had been for most of the season so the competition wasn’t quite there but it will be from now on. Both are great goalkeepers, Forster has a bit of extra height than Hart and Butland is a stunning shot stopper. Hart isn’t exactly short, believe it or not he’s an inch or two taller than David De Gea, but DDG has those long arms and quick reflexes. Poor Joe has pretty stubby arms and heavy feet for a keeper, though boy can he belt that national anthem.
You can join the choir complaining about ‘character’ and ‘leadership’ if you want but that stuff ought to stem from the manager. The lesson needs to be learnt that you can’t just throw the players out there and ask them to figure it out anymore. You couldn’t anyway, really. If you have a superstar to build around you can do that but England doesn’t have a Cristiano Ronaldo or a Gareth Bale. Not even a Marek Hamsik, to be brutally honest. None of these players are even the best at their clubs. But there are ways around that, the Northern Irish team made it as far as England did (with as many wins) with a team selected from West Brom players and Championship players.
Perhaps England need to borrow a bit of that “small-mentality” that’s done the Icelanders so well. Or use their precarious political position in Europe right now as motivation to play the villains. Get a role going, you know? Because right now, in the wake of Euro 2016, they look like a team that considers themselves up there with the best in the continent but doesn’t consider themselves a possibility to win it. Wales don’t believe in lifting the trophy either, but a united team culture and a clear strategy of play has taken them further than their British comrades. Yes, and Gareth Bale has helped too.
Imagine an English team that didn’t see counter attacking football as beneath them. Sitting deep, crowding the midfield and then releasing the likes of Vardy, Sterling and Rashford on the break. It’d be pure murder. Even better when you consider that playing that way also involves doing actual work to limit the opposition’s strengths. Every bugger with a twitter account could have told you that Iceland would target their long throws, courtesy of Aron Gunnarsson, and yet England conceded from the first one they saw. Not only that, but they casually gave away that throw in the first place, Danny Rose nodding a loose ball over the line within Gunnarsson range. Oh, and what’s more is that Gunnarsson plays for Cardiff and developed the weapon (a product of a childhood playing handball) while at Coventry City. It’s as if they didn’t even bother scouting them.
In actual fact they did, though Hodgson wasn’t there. He went sight-seeing while a five-man delegation watched Iceland steal a win over Austria, cheering when the late winner went in. Nothing wrong with that in the moment, it only looks bad as people scramble for scapegoats in the aftermath, but it is the coach’s task to apply those messages. Hodgson spoke about Gunnarsson’s long throw in the days before the match
Roy Hodgson: “I’d like to think we prepare for everything when it comes to opponents. Certainly I’ve been watching Iceland and you’d have to be a bit blind not to realise that Gunnarsson is a real weapon for them… They have already scored from a long throw-in, so that’s a warning to us that if we don’t do our homework and get our positional play correct and make the right challenges it will give them a chance to score again.”
Yup. Not really much more I need to say on that matter.
What does Spanish football mean to you? Probably high-pressing, voluminous passing and endless movement in the midfield. German football? Lots of possession again, lots of energy and great organisation. Italian? Defensive structure and pragmatic footy. There’s an English style of play as well, it’s called the long ball, but the English team haven’t played that way for years because of the old fashioned, boring stigma that it carries. Remember the backlash that Louis Van Gaal took for Long Ball United. Fair enough, it’s not easy to watch, but there are variations on that theme. Leicester City play long balls all the time, they lure opponents forward and hit them with Vardy’s pace against exposed defenders. I’m not saying that England has to play in a more direct way here, I’m saying that they need to be more open to playing in a way that suits the players that they have. Or in some distinctive way, at least, any distinctive way.
When Belgium got sick of how they were doing internationally – following a disastrous showing as co-hosts of Euro 2004 – they drastically reshaped their approach to youth football. They saw the future as being a more flexible attacking 4-3-3 formation and began developing their youngsters in academies and national youth teams to play within that system, while still emphasising individual flair. The result has been this current golden generation with guys like Eden Hazard, Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne and all them. Believe me, there’s no shortage of teenagers coming through after them either.
English players are being brought up to play in a style that isn’t consistent with what they’re going to be playing when they reach the top. Coaches at kids’ levels aren’t encouraging that play or anything but that’s what they’ll revert to when they don’t have another approach to stick to. Hey, you can do that. You can implement a consistent approach to footy among the whole country – Germany did it and it a few years before Belgium and they ended up with a World Cup for that.
There is hope in other ways though. While the Germans focussed on developing players through schools, the English system is club-based. A team like either of the Manchester ones has ideas on how they want to play and will bring players up with that in mind. Liverpool and Everton have similar ideas, as do West Ham and Southampton. It’s not exactly unified but England did just win the Toulon Tournament in France (an annual youth invitational) for the first time since 1994. The likes of James Ward-Prowse, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Lewis Baker, Ben Chilwell and Matt Targett are all well-rounded footy players that’ll play for their country someday.
Or the other option is to find an Antonio Conte somewhere and give him bundles of cash to mould the England team into something coherent. Although he did manage England to that Toulon win, Gareth Southgate would not appear to be the answer. As for Harry Redknapp, Alan Pardew, David Moyes or Alan Shearer, l mean come on. Eddie Howe and Brendan Rodgers have club jobs, so now does Jose Mourinho. Sam Allardyce would definitely leave Sunderland for the gig he still thinks should have been his a few years ago, he’d certainly get them playing a little more Iceland if that’s the idea.
Interestingly it sounds like the FA are considering Southgate as interim until Arsene Wenger’s contract with Arsenal runs out next year. Say what you will about Uncle Arsene but after initially being one of the first Premier League managers to embrace the foreign player influx (Gianni Vialli’s Chelsea in 1999-00 were the first to play a starting XI of entirely non players and Wenger’s Arsenal joined that group six years later), Arsene has spent the last half-decade or more doing his best to bring through local players and establish them within his own short-passing, creatively expressive approach.
They’d have to wait to get him but if Arsene Wenger were to be the new England manager they’d have themselves a boss who knows the English game and their players as well as anyone, a boss with an identified style of play that he rigidly implements and a big name manager at a time when big name managers aren’t exactly flocking to international teams. Yeah, sure, he doesn’t win that much these days, but his cup form has been better these last few years and I’m pretty sure England fans, unlike their Arsenal-loving compatriots, will settle for fourth place.