Do not stray towards the left
England have everything - except the fortitude to change. Sound familiar?
This is Editor’s Take: during EURO2024, home of the SCOUTED team’s quick-fire thoughts on the tournament as it happens.
For a team soundtracked by trumpets and drums, England sure do struggle for rhythm. I’d say ‘two left feet’, but the back four last night possessed not a single one, and Luke Shaw’s has only just emerged from a cast. The resulting homogeny was turgid, stiff and completely directionless against Denmark - if football is a dance, England look like Tony Adams on Strictly.
The predictable downpour of angry opinion, scapegoating and oxymoronic frustrations followed; England discourse is swinging a scythe through a field of very tall poppies. Declan Rice is the best six in the world but can’t pass forward - that kinda stuff, you know the drill. But this time, such waffle has been interspersed with murmurings of something much closer to the truth. Even outside the hardcore circles our readers occupy, there is a spreading acknowledgement that something structural is broken. England have all the pieces. What they’ve assembled looks like a child drawing a Picasso from memory.
What hurts most is the sense of missed opportunity, even before the opportunity has actually passed. After years of conservatism, of a supposedly ‘sensible’ pragmatism that has returned exactly nothing, the stage was set for a vibrant renewal. Instead, Gareth Southgate has rammed his very square head into a very round hole. He’s stuck.
He wants to play flowing, attacking, Premier League football, as blueprinted by the country’s best teams. But Arsenal and Manchester City press with a tutored intelligence honed over decades in the mind of football’s nerdiest-ever man. Their centre-backs go high and aggressive as their marshalling sixes strangle every attempt at escape. They suffocate. England, meanwhile, left enough space between their lines to float several Danish ferries. They pressed like unsure if pressing is even allowed. Is it against the rules, actually? Jude? Jude, are you behind me?
He also wants to play zippy transitionball, the kind that has proven so effective a platform for the superstars of France. Sitting deep after scoring and killing teams on the counter is a perfectly valid means of winning a football game. Marcus Rashford knows - in fact, as I write this, he’s just set his FC24 tactics to ‘direct’ on his PS5. Anthony Gordon knows too, as he twiddles his thumbs and stares into space and wonders why the hell they’ve closed the roof in all this goddamn heat. God knows how those boys would feast with Kane dropping deep, Trent finding feet, Jude crashing in. Actually forget God, Southgate should know: he’s done it before. Pieces, pieces, pieces.
And finally we come to the grotesque, misshapen blob Southgate has assembled in his midfield. If Trent Alexander-Arnold was anything other than a born-and-bred Liverpudlian less likely to accept a big-money move than spontaneously combust, this could, in another life, be the most expensive midfield ever assembled. Three true superstars in the prime of their lives who have each, in their own ways, terrorised opponents as recently as weeks ago. A talismanic Champions League winner with the gravity of a small moon; a decorated young champion with the passing range of a thermonuclear missile; a £105m one-man-army who dragged his team to within a day of their first league title in twenty-odd years. Put them together and you get Ed, Edd n Eddy, apparently.
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EURO 2024 has, so far, been set to the drums of the world’s great controllers. England don’t have one - only several candidates for the future. But Kobbie Mainoo and Adam Wharton are too young, of course. You can’t throw inexperience into the deep end, as the game directly after England’s proved: Lamine Yamal played well passed his bedtime, and on a school night too.
Look at that game, look at the hosts and twinge a little jealous. Germany, after years of stagnation and disaster, hired a young coach full of ideas and energy. He introduced concepts like pairing a generational passer with an unfashionable but effective destroyer. He put a 6’4” striker at left-back. He built a smart system that lets his really good dribblers do really good dribbles. Woke nonsense. It’s so much fun. They look amazing. As do Spain, with their electric, combined-age-of-37 wingers and beautifully balanced midfield. Marc Cucurella starts because he makes more sense than Álex Grimaldo, even if it means missing Europe’s most cultured left foot. Álvaro Morata starts because the wingers need their battering ram. Look what happens when you assemble your pieces for the good of the whole. Madness.
It all adds up to such a sad, predictable story. England, again, are within touching distance of something magical. All the obvious problems - Trent has no runners to aim for and can’t play ahead of the ball, the press is confused and childish, the left-hand-side a vacuous black hole, and the midfield missing guile and control - are fixable with some progressive thinking and collective will. As ever, it’s those things England lack. They have all the pieces, but not the fortitude to change. They want it all, but are unwilling to knock down the shrine of the individual to get there. The best are in charge, nobody panic.
In England, the collective good is flattened in favour of servicing the top ballers. It’s okay if the rivers are full of shit as long as our best players are on the pitch. Just give them the ball, they’ll sort it. They’ll lead the way. The good will trickle down. It’s been this way for so long: this kind of turgid footballing austerity we’ve been told and told and told is the best way, because anything else would be a risk, would be naïve, would ‘destroy the economy’ or whatever. Shut it, the adults are talking shareholder dividends and why pressing systems are woke. You child. You idiot.
This summer promised so much change, a renewal, a new dawn, and what have we done? Stuck a lauded star on the far left who wants nothing more than to drift towards the centre. Ha.
Well, this is England’s bed now. Sleep in it.
Slovenia next.
Horribly accurate and entertainingly written. Exactly why I pay to subscribe.