It has taken Southgate too long to discover England’s best team… and then he waits too long to change it
Gareth Southgate made the right call in selecting Phil Foden on the left, and Trent Alexander-Arnold in central midfield, for England’s first Euro 2024 match. They were both net contributors to the victory.
It is ironic that the clamour for both to be included is based on their club form: England got it so wrong for so long in the ‘golden generation’ era because we tried to wedge too many Premier League stars into the same team.
That’s not what this is. Instead, it is a case of Southgate recognising how the exceptional talents of Foden and Alexander-Arnold can be used to support the system he wants to play, which is actually based around England’s more important players (Karry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, John Stones and Kyle Walker).
It doesn’t have to be perfect football to be effective football.
The football would have been more effective, however, if this obvious-in-hindsight starting eleven and basic approach (notwithstanding the injuries to two first-choice defenders) had been arrived at sooner. It took Southgate too long to get here. And now that he has arrived, he remains too conservative when faced with game conditions that diminish the potency of the starting strategy.
Foden: there is no one more able to play this role in this team
Phil Foden doesn’t need to be a superstar in every match. He doesn’t even need to play that well in every tournament: he probably only needs around 1.5 good summers to be considered an all-time great of the English game. This probably won’t be the one… but it could still be the half.
Foden has a wider range of attributes than almost any other elite footballer. He can pick the ball up in deep areas and usually advance play. He can take possession high up the pitch and usually be expected to keep hold of it. He knows his way around the penalty box for lay-offs and tap-ins in tight areas. He has a very accurate shot from mid-range too, and he can usually be relied upon to deliver a decent set-piece.
He would contribute more to the game creatively in a central position. But he can contribute plenty as it is, albeit less theatrically than most fans seem to demand.
With the possibility that England will be using Kieran Trippier at left-back for a substantial portion of the tournament, Foden is bound to be constrained. But I trust Foden to manage this constraint more than I trust anyone else. And so does Southgate. Foden is a team player.
If that’s all we get from Foden at Euro 2024, that’s enough. And if/when Luke Shaw returns, the left-side dynamic immediately shifts anyway.
None of this means that, even as things stand, Foden cannot be used differently when game situations demand it. Against Serbia, I think he could’ve been given an opportunity on the right when Saka departed, with Anthony Gordon or Eberichi Eze replacing him on the left, rather than Jarrod Bowen replacing Saka on the right. But Bowen created an excellent chance for Kane almost immediately, so it’s hard to argue Southgate made the wrong call.
Southgate might have also considered giving Foden a chance in the centre at this stage of the game. Bellingham could have dropped deeper to replace Trent Alexander-Arnold, negating the need to introduce the obviously inferior Connor Gallagher.
So the manager got the big call right, but he lacks mastery of the details that can deliver tournament wins. As well as being too predictable in his in-game replacements, I think it was a mistake not to select Marcus Rashford or Jack Grealish as an understudy for Foden. To enable England to take advantage of Foden’s versatility as game conditions evolve, I think either would have been safer choices than Gordon or Eze to replace Foden on the left — but this is an option Southgate has deprived himself of.
Alexander-Arnold: still England’s best chance of matching France, Germany and Spain
Southgate has also deprived himself of two other players who could have been quite handy in these circumstances: Rico Lewis and Eric Dier.
Lewis has played extremely well for Man City for two seasons, whenever he has had the chance to do so. But he has been unfairly penalised for playing for a better team than Gordon, Eze or Bowen, as well as Kobbie Mainoo, Adam Wharton and Cole Palmer, insofar as he has not been able to cement a regular place in Pep Guardiola’s first team.
If nothing else, Lewis is a better right-footed left-back than Trippier (and more accustomed to playing alongside Foden in these circumstances).
Lewis, like Dier, is clearly also an option in central midfield. But let’s be clear: Southgate has already settled on the best option, that is, Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Critics will point to the fumble that granted Serbia a goalscoring opportunity. But the reality is that Alexander-Arnold solves more problems than he causes. Creates more chances than he concedes.
This isn’t necessarily the case when he plays as a defender in a team that doesn’t contain Virgil van Dijk, just as it wasn’t necessarily the case when he played for England before Foden and Bellingham replaced Raheem Sterling and Mason Mount. The equation has now changed.
And, yes, Southgate has learned something along the way, namely that there is no point building a team dependent on a Sergio Busquets- or N’Golo Kanté-type player unless said player is literally Sergio Busquets or N’Golo Kanté. Stones in midfield might have fitted the bill, but he is needed in central defence.
So, at long last, Trent Alexander-Arnold it is. He helps England to move the ball more quickly than we are used to. He can find angles that force opposition midfielders into positions they are less comfortable with, even at elite level. And he will usually have more time on the ball in central midfield at international level than he would in the Premier League.
He doesn’t have Mo Salah to aim at for England, but then again, in Harry Kane he does have the world’s best target man. In Rice, he has a brilliant midfield partner at the top of his game.
It isn’t going to go without a hitch. Alexander-Arnold lacks discipline but his passing range means he is a credible, if unconventional, answer to the lack of midfield control that has cost England three trophies under Southgate.
Southgate’s ruthless selections hide a lack of adaptability that could be England’s undoing
Just as Foden is being asked to do less than he is capable of, there is of course a risk that Alexander-Arnold is being asked to more than he is accustomed to.
But it does not need to work for every minute of every match. The starting eleven can and should be tweaked in light of the opposition. And England must be prepared to adapt their approach within matches.
With all due respect to a manager who has accomplished more than almost all of his predecessors, being slow to react is Southgate’s main weakness.
I think this problem is the flipside of his greatest strength. Southgate is a brilliant personnel manager, grasping the human dimension of football perfectly. The team he picked against Serbia reflects years of supporting the development of a small group of next-gen players, cultivated to peak at the right time, just as much as it represented the best tactical set-up for the occasion.
Southgate is good at building a strategy around the players he has. He tends to substitute players only when they tire, rather than to adapt this strategy to changing circumstances. But he ends up changing strategy by default, because the replacements are rarely like-for-like.
I think Southgate has a specific view of what substitutes are for, based on his own experience of playing for and observing England for decades before becoming manager. In the past, England have invariably been chasing matches: substitutes have an impact primarily by injecting pace, in the closing stages of the game.
This imaginary has shaped squad selection. But it does not, thanks in part to Southgate himself, really represent who England are anymore.
We are more likely now to need substitutes to manage matches, not chase them. This is the reason why one of Gordon or Eze should have been sacrificed to retain Grealish. And it is also why Dier, now starring for Bayern Munich, should have been picked (certainly after Harry Maguire was withdrawn). Experience is almost everything in these circumstances, and Dier is clearly more likely to be able to join a game after an hour’s play and acclimatise quickly, in defence or midfield, compared to someone who has never played in the Champions League, let alone an international tournament.
Better never than late?
This is not to suggest that the substitutions against Serbia failed. But what options has Southgate given himself to more radically change the team’s shape when required? He is clearly not going to trust players with one or two caps in friendlies in these circumstances: Gallagher and Bowen are going to be the go-to replacements in every match.
Southgate has filled his squad out with players who are barely going to get a kick.
This might have been understandable if the starting eleven had been settled for the last eighteen months. But this has not been the case.
The Serbia match was the first time this team had played together. This would still be true even if the first-choice central defender and left-back had been fit. This is all the more unusual when key players are being asked to play in roles they do not routinely play domestically.
Starting on the left does not mean Foden will not move inwards. He knows when to risk it. But less experienced players — and, yes, this includes Bellingham — do not know everything that Phil Foden knows.
Absurdly, Foden has rarely played on the left for England, and has played there less than ever recently. The question is not whether he can play there — he undoubtedly can — but whether his team-mates can make the most of him playing there. This should have been prioritised over Southgate trying to figure out who was going to warm the bench. Foden was below his best on the ball, but his positioning off the ball was excellent against Serbia.
Alexander-Arnold has had a little more time in central midfield, but still not nearly enough, given the significant differences in gameplan between Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool and Southgate’s England. While England played their best front six against Serbia; they should have been playing together, in this formation, for a while.
It was perhaps Declan Rice who was most affected. For all the flashier players in this side, there is a case now for seeing Rice as second only to Kane as England’s key player. Yet the partnership with Alexander-Arnold is still worth less than the considerable sum of its parts, because they have not adapted their game to each other.
It was primarily Rice’s wayward positioning that prevented England from pushing Serbia back in the second half, and he was eventually forced into a safety-first posture in front of the defence that does not suit the team that Southgate has belatedly picked.
While Southgate has got the big calls right, it may be that he has made them too late for England to really flourish at Euro 2024. This would ordinarily mean greater flexibility in shape and personnel is required, for the moments when it isn’t quite working, but an odd squad selection and Southgate’s lack of tactical nous could prove to be significant downsides.
It may turn out that, deprived of the time needed to become a different type of football team, Southgate’s instinctively cautious approach would have been a better strategy.
All this said, the Serbia match was deservedly won. England defended their lead well. Bellingham’s early goal was fortunate, but England should have scored at least one more in the second half, either Kane’s effort from the Bowen cross, or the moment Foden was entirely free on the eighteen yard line only to be ignored by a showboating Bellingham.
Having now played and won a competitive match, this team will learn quickly how to play together more effectively. The performances will undoubtedly improve. Of course, strategic advantage does not itself guarantee results: England will have to get the details right too.
