Disjointed England defy Danish destiny [Berry’s Biennial Blast]
You would have to have a heart of stone not to feel pleased for this group of players. One of the best things about England finally reaching a ‘major final’ in men’s football is that this mostly modest group, with a few genuinely lovely and inspirational people among them, managed to succeed where a more talented group of toerags, tosspots and Tories like David Beckham, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Paul Scholes, Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell and Michael Owen failed.[1]
Come on, though. It was a wretched performance. Every tournament-winning team has a few wobbles, especially at this stage — and once they pull through, the good fortune they relied upon along the way is reimagined as destiny.
England have now delivered three poor performances in this tournament, which is probably more than their quota. Even a good performance in the final will not be enough to defeat Italy, unless it actually is, because this is knockout football and the best team does not always win (see: Belgium).
The thing that really bothers me is that England need not be this bad. Regulars readers might have inferred that I dislike Gareth Southgate rather a lot. Maybe I do dislike him, a bit [2], but no more than I do most people, especially English nationalists. He is not a bad man, or a bad manager. But he is not quite the man or the manager y’all seem to think he is.
Settlement scheme
This England team does not have a settled way of playing. To some extent, this is inevitable in international football, when the pool of players is limited (especially for England, given the nature of the Premier League), and managers have limited scope to pick players to suit a particular system.
Against Denmark, England exhibited a (lack of) pattern evident throughout most of the tournament, uncertain whether to press high, sit back, prioritise possession or get the ball forward quickly. Some pundits have remarked upon the team’s apparent capacity to switch styles from one ‘phase’ to the next. But there is a fine line between ‘game management’ and ‘running out of ideas’ at this level. England are clearly on the wrong side of it — otherwise we would have beaten a limited Denmark side more straightforwardly.
Tactical dexterity is a useful asset, but equally, in tournament football, it is essential that teams find their rhythm quickly. The well-earned victory over Germany was an opportunity to do that, but the plan was immediately discarded as Southgate demanded more goals than were necessary to beat Ukraine in the quarter-finals.
Game management is one thing, but tournament management is another. England needed to stick to the strategy that beat Germany, because this is how we are going to need to play to beat the better teams. England have now thrown away two further beta-testing opportunities against weaker opponents before we face Europe’s form side in the final.
The back-five is not necessarily excessively defensive — in fact it allows for the flexibility within games that Southgate seems to prize between games. And, crucially, England have the players for it. Above all, as we saw against Germany, the extra defensive cover would release Luke Shaw — England’s main creative player since the Czech Republic match — to play more offensively. Shaw was easily contained by Denmark on Wednesday night.
On the other hand, a back-five formation arguably restricts Kyle Walker, if he plays in central defence. Walker was England’s best player against Denmark, able to use his pace to get beyond the Danish wide containment strategy to move the play upfield. However, against Italy, there is no doubt that England will need Walker in defence (where he has also excelled) more than in attack.
Moreover, a back-five formation allows for the inclusion of Kieran Trippier — also a seriously good footballer, more so now than in 2018 when he was a regular starter for England — who is able to cover defensively when Walker ventures forward, and complement a central midfield which is currently struggling. As ever, this is tournament football, so set-piece deliveries will probably make the difference: Trippier has few peers in this department.
Central midfield is currently England’s main outfield weakness (especially if Jordan Henderson is still not fit enough to start the final). Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips were good against Germany, but this performance cannot be separated from the reinforcement offered by the back-five system. They were both poor for large parts of the Ukraine match, affording Oleksandr Zinchenko, Manchester City’s occasional left-back, far too much territory, even if the Ukrainians were unable to capitalise.
Mason Mount is a very good footballer, but he is not good enough to make up for this vulnerability. This is in part because he missed two matches — losing his tournament tango in the process — and in part because he is again being used as Southgate’s everywhere man. He is not going to excel on every part of the pitch all at once.
The great rotation
While Mount’s absence was initially covid-related, England are using a rotation system more generally. The best player from the opening two matches, Phil Foden, was dropped, returning only for extra time on Wednesday. Walker was at one point left out of the matchday squad altogether. Jack Grealish has been sampled. Shaw was also apparently going to be dropped, before Ben Chilwell was also forced to self-isolate.
Most obviously, Southgate brought Bukayo Saka in for two mostly ineffective performances against Czech Republic and Germany, then dropped him in favour of Jadon Sancho for the 4–0 thrashing of Ukraine, before dropping Sancho again in favour Saka for the Denmark match.
Sancho was poor versus Ukraine — probably England’s worst player. But that is exactly what we should have expected, when a player is playing his first tournament match ever, at the quarter-final stage. Saka probably had his best game yet, against Denmark, despite seeing less of the ball. But he still barely rose above average — he is not ready for this level. Here is the crux: he is usually excellent when he gets on the ball (and has a very bright future) but his contributions are largely peripheral, because his inclusion is an afterthought.
And let us not misinterpret Saka’s ‘assist’ for England’s first goal: he was handed the ball in space by Harry Kane, with no defenders nearby, only for his cross to hit the first defender and deflect into the net. Kane’s play deserved a goal, but Saka made a mess of it, and England got lucky.
The rotation policy is being sold as a way of keeping everybody sharp, an objective which seems legit, unless you actually think about it. This is a knockout tournament, not a pre-season friendly. The policy exists for two main reasons. First, Southgate is trying to convince us, or himself, that he is an elite coach, able to ‘see the whole board’ and move his pieces into the perfect position accordingly. He is not an elite coach. But that is fine: he does not need to be one in order to win Euro 2020, or indeed the next World Cup.
Second, it is possible that Southgate has developed a messianic sense that he needs to protect his adult players from, well, actually having to play football.[3] Southgate alone must bear the burden of responsibility for England’s performances, so as few players as possible should be seen as indispensable. That this also feeds into the narrative, which Southgate continues to fuel, of his redemption for Euro 1996 is a bonus. (Kane is the main exception to rotation — as discussed further below).
I know you are besotted with Gareth Southgate right now. There is no truer love than that of a football supporter for their team’s leader, so who am I to stand in the way? But trust me, dear readers, I am saying all of this for your own good. In a decade it will be easier to find someone who admits voting leave than someone who admits txting “I ❤️ Gareth” to the family WhatsApp group.[4] He is basically Clive Woodward, exploiting the fortuitous coinciding of some of England’s greatest ever rugby union players to present himself as a sporting meta-guru. Woodward is now of course insufferable. (Southgate does not have as many superstars at his disposal as Woodward did, but his squad has unusual depth — hardly any filler — which the rotation policy showcases.)
Southgate will stop being England manager one day. He will again underwhelm as a club manager and slide into football governance, occasionally popping up with some vague state-of-the-nation nonsense to justify whatever corporate crap happens to be in vogue. He is basically Seb Coe. He is Gary Neville without the instinctive football brain, the genuinely left-wing politics, or the sense of humour. He is basically David Baddiel.
England expected
It may sound like nit-picking, but I could not help but notice that England did not really score a proper goal against Denmark. This does not mean they did not ‘deserve’ to win, whatever that means, but it does mean that they could easily have lost.
As noted above, while the forward play leading to England’s opening goal was impressive, the goal itself was fortunate, with Saka having misplaced the crucial pass.
There is little point debating the penalty award any further: Sterling dived, just like most other professional footballers would have done. Robbie Fowler famously refused to accept a penalty unjustly awarded, but then he became a slum landlord. There are worse things in life than what Sterling did, and Denmark scored from a free-kick which was also unjustly awarded.
Then again, Sterling already owns a street full of low-income housing in Reddish, where I grew up. I love Raheem Sterling. Believe it or not, last year I made a model of him with my daughters, which I still have in my socks drawer (what happens in home-schooling…). But at this rate, he’ll soon be below even Robbie Fowler in my esteem: an unimaginable low.
What should be debated is the goal which resulted from the penalty itself. Harry Kane’s penalty was probably the worst spot kick taken by an England player since Gareth Southgate’s effort in ’96. However, according to almost every single media commentator — high on their own by-lines — Kane actually ‘held his nerve’ to score the rebound. This is utter nonsense. Harry Kane, unlike Southgate, knows how to take a penalty, but he bottled the biggest moment of his career. That is the football story here.
Readers may remember my 2018 diatribe against corner kicks, which I believe are distorting the beautiful game to some extent. Penalty rebounds are rarer, but an even greater abomination. A team is awarded a penalty when an opportunity to score is illegally thwarted. If the penalty is missed, the game should then stop. It usually does, because the shot misses the target altogether. The permissibility of rebounds actually punishes goalkeepers — and therefore their teams — for exceptional play, that is, saving an on-target penalty.
If a penalty is saved, but the ball does not go out of play, more often than not a situation arises in which the penalty-taker is rewarded for their unforgiveable miss with an unmissable chance, because the goalkeeper is temporarily immobilised, and the defenders have been held back several metres away. This reward is disproportionate to the initial foul, for which an easy opportunity to score had already been awarded, and actually follows immediately from a very poor piece of play by the attacking team (failing to score a penalty).
So, no, Kane does not deserve any credit for his goal. Again, England got lucky. Luck is part of all sport — it adds to the spectacle — but this should really only apply to situations genuinely beyond human control, not good fortune arising from the application of rules poorly designed by humans.
(On the subject of luck, it is also worth noting that Denmark ended the match with only ten players, a fact barely mentioned in the television coverage or press reports — although it was briefly noted that Denmark were ‘a member of staff’ down in Sam Matterface’s nauseatingly jingoistic commentary for ITV. “I don’t give a flying fuck,” responded ‘analyst’ Lee Dixon, although probably only in my imagination.)
In sum, England failed to score fairly, but this does not mean they were not the better team, based on chances created. There has been some debate about what England’s xG total was. Generally speaking, own goals do not count towards xG. Some would argue that Sterling would certainly have scored had the cross not been blocked, so England’s first goal should be awarded the full 1.0 in the xG system. This is mad: Saka failed to find Sterling with his cross, so no xG came about.
Penalties also do not count towards xG, and most stats folk would also exclude the rebound, despite being an unmissable chance, albeit unjustly created. So, England by their own merits ended the two-hour Denmark match with an xG score of 1.6. We had a very large number of shots, but almost all of them were low-percentage scoring opportunities.
The bulk of the 1.6 xG score consisted of Sterling’s close-range, one-on-one opportunity, which was saved by Kasper Schmeichel. As I have said many times before, Raheem Sterling is not a particularly good finisher. He is brilliant at late-arriving tap-ins. He has already scored one goal this tournament from a one-on-one situation, versus Croatia. For City, he only scores around one in three of these opportunities (which is why he never plays centrally), so his glaring, unbelievable, xG miss versus Denmark was exactly what I would have expected to happen. He hit the ball very poorly, just as he did against Croatia, and on this occasion came up against a superior goalkeeper.
There is a sense, of course, that all of this is exactly how the English want it to happen. We want to stay in the tournament, because it is fun. Ideally, UEFA would let England remain, while actually losing every match, because it allows us to continue using football as a collective therapy cushion. Southgate is caught up in this trauma — how else can we explain his team selections?
The next best outcome is that England lose but also somehow win. The Denmark match was therefore the perfect tonic. And Harry Kane’s penalty rebound was particularly therapeutic.
Kane is the main exception to the rotation policy, not because he warrants a guaranteed start, but because Southgate sees his own self-centred journey reflected in Kane. The manager constantly compares Kane’s situation to that of Alan Shearer in ’96. (It is rather odd that Southgate seems never to mention Shearer’s performances in any subsequent tournament, despite also playing in most of them himself.) In fact, the worse Kane plays, the more indispensable he becomes, because it all adds to the redemptive potential.
Kane actually played well in the Denmark match — an inconvenient truth he evened out with the penalty miss.
And finally
Let us assume for a moment that the final versus Italy on Sunday is a match England might want to win. There are several things we therefore need to worry about.
First, Italy. Yes, England, other countries exist.
Second, the goalkeeper. The Jordan Pickford we know and shrug returned in the Ukraine match, making several errors. He was very poor against Denmark, and is due a calamitous error any time now.
Third, John Stones. He has been quite solid in this tournament so far. But against Denmark he misplaced a few passes, and is bound to be put under more pressure by Italy.
Fourth, Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips. If Southgate persists with the back-four, especially with Luke Shaw at left-back, the limitations of the central midfield pair could be fatally exposed. Kalvin Phillips was also responsible for a lot of England’s non-xG shots versus Denmark; he needs to play with more restraint, giving the ball away as little as possible.
Fifth, perhaps most importantly, the forwards. Sterling currently looks like the best player in the world, but there is, y’know, a reason City want to sell him to Spurs. International football is played in a way that means good players can seem like great players, but they can suddenly look very ordinary when the game is played more like a typical Champions League knockout match, as I am sure will be the case on Sunday.
This was also the case with the Italy/Spain semi-final. Spain have been poor throughout the tournament, but were transformed into a decent team precisely because they were playing a fellow elite team. Italy won, due to Spain’s lack of a world-class striker, but were reduced to looking like exactly what they are: a team full of players with only Champions League group-stage experience. Perfect for international football, most of the time.
England are a curious mix of Champions League superstars and mid-table maestros, with a couple of decent Europa League players. Moreover, many of our Champions League knockout-stage players are usually on the bench.
It is too late now for the ‘false nine’ formation, but England must find a way to ensure that our xG chances fall to Kane, rather than Sterling. That means finding a player as good as Kane at also creating chances. Saka and Sterling are obviously very good players, but this will probably not be enough on Sunday. There is, y’know, a reason City want to sign Kane from Spurs.
The dilemma for Southgate is that Sterling and Saka are also useful defensive players, because they can run with the ball from deep to relieve pressure. It is a tough one, admittedly. But it is surely not an irresolvable dilemma: Southgate has had plenty of time to devise and test a solution before now, but has elected not to do so.
Destiny defiled
Take a look at the Denmark match from any perspective other than an English one: Denmark would have been worthy winners of the semi-final. Not because they were the better team, but precisely because they were not the better team, yet still restricted England to very few clear chances.
Sterling dived for the penalty, the rebound rules worked against them, and any hope of a last-gasp equaliser was extinguished when Denmark were reduced to ten players.
Let us not forget Christian Eriksen. How Denmark have recovered from losing their best player in such horrendous circumstances, and then being forced to finish the match against Finland, is quite remarkable. Only Spain, France and (West) Germany have won this tournament more times than Denmark. Their win came after failing to qualify for the 1992 tournament, dragging themselves off the beach to beat the world champions in the final. Their current goalkeeper is the son of one of the heroes of ’92. If there were any justice in football (there is not, and should not be, but if there were…) this would have been Denmark’s year.
Some England fans again booed our opponent’s national anthem. One dickhead even seriously assaulted the aforementioned goalkeeper, Kasper Schmeichel, with a green laser, before the penalty. Incidentally, Schmeichel is the only Danish player who would get into England’s first eleven — he has probably performed better for Denmark this summer than anyone in an England shirt has performed. Ironically, he could actually have chosen to play for England instead of the country of his birth.
We have to be better than this. There will always be dickheads but sport is supposed to bring out our best, not our worst. Some of the biggest dickheads of all play for Italy, so I’ll be cheering as loudly as anyone if we beat them.[5] It has brought out the best in our players — for which they, not their part-time manager, deserve all the credit. Southgate’s job is finding a way to bring out their best after kick-off, if we are to stand any chance in the final.
NOTES
1. I do feel bad for Wazza though 😦
2. So should you: never forget 😠
3. Thanks to Steph for this insight 😃
4. I have saved the screenshots 😛
5. As long as Foden plays, obvs 😉
