Oh dear: England deserved to win Euro 2020 [Berry’s Biennial Blast]
I do not like the notion that losing teams ‘deserved’ to win particular football matches. It should be enough comfort for supporters to know that their team could have won. It means they might win next time. On this occasion, however, I am going to say it: England thoroughly deserved to win the Euro 2020 final. It was our best performance of the tournament and, until the 119th minute of the match, the finest moment of Gareth Southgate’s career.
I am not going to dwell on the lunacy of Southgate’s late substitutions or his approach to the shoot-out. The game was actually thrown away an hour earlier, by Harry Kane. Italy were poor throughout the match, unable to break down an outstanding England defence. England’s goal came from excellent counter-attacking, after Southgate finally re-embraced the back-five formation that had always represented England’s clearest path to glory.
Italy’s equaliser came from a corner-kick, one of football’s strangest customs. As the ball bounced around close to goal, two Italian players would both have been in offside positions when the ball was deflected towards goal, had Harry Kane not remained glued to the goal-line. Failing to advance with his team-mates after the initial danger of the corner-kick had been averted was a poor decision — perhaps born of the hero complex Southgate has cultivated in his centre-forward — and follows on from Kane being responsible in the semi-final for the worst penalty taken by an English player in the tournament.
Indefensible
The outstanding defenders of Euro 2020 were John Stones, Harry Maguire and Kyle Walker. To concede only two goals throughout the tournament — none from open play, and rarely relying on England’s average goalkeeper — is an incredible achievement. Walker was probably England’s best player overall, but I would be content to give Stones the accolade of player of the entire tournament, despite a mini-wobble in the semi-final, since he played every minute of every match.
Italy’s defence, in contrast, was rather less good. Despite their outstanding goalkeeper, they conceded four goals, including three from open play. Goalscorer Leonardi Bonucci looked as composed as he always does on the ball, but has become a weak point when teams attack Italy. And it is not difficult to look composed when the midfield in front of you is packed with deep-lying ball-players, all of whom are above-average standard.
Giorgio Chiellini looked better, defensively. He is a great player who had a good tournament. But he ultimately let his team down in the final, losing his composure when he violently attacked Bukayo Saka, half his age and half his size. He deserved a red card and a lengthy ban. Inevitably, both defenders were selected in UEFA’s team of the tournament and, as captain, Chiellini may well be in line for the Ballon d’Or.
Furthermore, we know with certainty that, if he were English, Bonucci would never have been picked by Gareth Southgate, after he remarked in 2019 that his black, teenage team-mate Moise Kean was partly responsible for the racism Kean regularly endures.
Let us contrast this with the time when John Terry was accused of racially abusing his England team-mate’s brother, Anton Ferdinand, in 2011. He was stripped of the captaincy of the national team while undergoing criminal prosecution. Despite being found ‘not guilty’ in court on a ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ basis, England’s Football Association (FA) announced its own inquiry, with a verdict based on ‘the balance of probabilities’. It seems likely that this process would have ended Terry’s England career, had he not pre-emptively retired from international football when the inquiry was announced. England’s Italian manager, Fabio Capello, had of course already resigned by this point, in protest at the FA’s treatment of Terry.
English culture, and therefore English football, has some serious problems. But at least our elite footballers are now basically decent people, living unusual lives. If it takes the rottenness and thuggery which Bonucci and Chiellini embody to win an international football tournament, then you can stick it.
Curse correction
If the final was lost anywhere, it was in central midfield. Italy were easily able to maintain possession in advanced territory. They could not create many chances, but forced a large number of set-pieces, one of which led to the goal. Italy’s xG score was quite high (2.69), but this was a result of an accumulation of low-percentage opportunities, with only one half-chance (0.55) created beyond Bonucci’s goal (0.64). If England’s vastly superior forwards had been granted this many opportunities, they would certainly have scored at least one more. But we simply could not get the ball to them, despite the increased numbers in midfield afforded by the back-five formation.
Sadly, England do not have the kind of players we need in central midfield, whatever the formation. Such is the paradox of England’s insular globalism: our cash-rich Premier League clubs are not going to invest resources in nurturing home-grown midfield talent, when they can buy better players ready-made from all over the world. Fast and skilful young players are immediately earmarked for less complicated roles in attack or defence. Paul Scholes almost suffered the same fate, before being turned into one of the world’s best central midfielders by a Scot — managing Manchester United anachronistically as his own little empire — but the national team wasted him.
Phil Foden or Mason Mount may end up in central midfield, but for the moment Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel do not need them there, and there is nothing that Gareth Southgate can do about it. Jude Bellingham represents England’s best hope, but it would be premature to expect too much of him. Declan Rice has time to improve.
The solution for Qatar 2022 is Trent Alexander-Arnold. He has the all-round game we have not yet seen Foden or Mount produce. He is of course England’s best right-back, but there are plenty of high-quality alternatives in this position (unlike the wide forward positions). Imagine a midfield three of Declan Rice, Jude Bellingham and Trent Alexander-Arnold. I am among Jordan Henderson’s biggest fans — for years, he has been the antidote to England’s lack of midfield quality — and he may well hold off Declan Rice for a while yet. Either way, he is an exceptional asset to have in reserve, but he is not the future.
Crucially, if England are going to rebuild our midfield in Qatar — in terms of personnel and structure — it needs to be locked in quickly, especially with Alexander-Arnold nominally deployed in defence for his club. One of the main reasons that England’s midfield struggled so much against Italy was the fact that we had played very differently during most of the tournament. It will take years, not a couple of training sessions, to get it right.
Yet I do not want to be overly critical of Southgate. The midfield England might play in Qatar does not yet exist, and there were few, if any, better options for Euro 2020. More could have been done, much earlier, to develop a more effective midfield — but we appointed a novice coach, who was always bound to make mistakes along the way, and tournament football does not allow for course corrections.
I may have disagreed with Southgate this summer on how to mitigate England’s weaknesses, but these were all marginal calls, and his team drew the final, so there you go. He will never be an elite coach, but we have already tried elites, and Southgate has now surpassed them all. Midfield has long been England’s curse. There may be a question mark around whether Southgate is really the person we need to rebuild the midfield, largely from scratch, which requires a different skillset from the man-management he clearly excels at. But is there anyone better available?
One thing is certain: we cannot just proclaim Bellingham as a magical remedy and watch the trophies roll in. Steven Gerrard was a fucking immense footballer. Scholes and Frank Lampard were world-class for at least a decade. Joe Cole did not turn out to be ‘the next Gazza’ — not least because he actually won stuff, repeatedly. Even Gareth Barry and Owen Hargreaves, when fit, were fine players, superior at their peak to Rice and Phillips at the moment. Football is hard.
Qatar for now
While there are reasons to be optimistic, there are reasons to believe that England are as likely to go backwards as the World Cup approaches. First, most obviously, let us not count on developing a winning midfield in less than a year and a half. Second, it is going to be a weird World Cup, played mid-season in high temperatures.
Third, despite England’s defensive masterclass this summer, Walker is a player who relies on pace, so is only going to get worse not better in his 30s. Maguire is injury prone, and Stones has as many bad years as good years. The alternative options are all significantly lower calibre.
Fourth, Jordan Pickford was excellent in the final shoot-out but few teams win World Cups without a genuinely exceptional goalkeeper. Fifth, Luke Shaw was excellent throughout the tournament on the flank, in both of England’s rudimentary structures, but he is a throwback footballer not comfortable playing more centrally, as modern full-backs are required. This contributed to England’s weakness in midfield.
Sixth, England do not score enough goals from set-pieces, which is a vital attribute in international football. None of the central defenders are strong in this area, and most of the forwards are too short.
This also speaks, seventh, to our ongoing over-reliance on Harry Kane. He is England’s only proven finisher, but he is also England’s best number 10. We certainly have the quality in forward positions to insist that Kane plays as a more orthodox number 9. But this is different from the position he plays at club level, so even a better coach would struggle to embed this approach in time for Qatar: we must hope that he signs for Manchester City this summer.
And if Kane is injured (which is more likely for a striker in a Guardiola team), it is difficult to see who else England can rely on up front. A ‘false nine’ formation should have been attempted this summer, but in tournament football it can only ever be a back-up plan. Marcus Rashford is a world-class human being but there are few signs he is going to be a world-class centre-forward. Mason Greenwood is not going to be ready by November 2022, even if he is as good as he appears to be. Raheem Sterling has had a brilliant summer, but it is probably not a trick he is going to repeat; irrespective, he does not have the attributes to play centrally.
The tournament conditions might of course work in England’s favour. We could be lucky with injuries, with Kane and Maguire both reaching their peak in the next year or two. Some of England’s most naturally talented players — Phil Foden, Jadon Sancho, Jude Bellingham and Trent Alexander-Arnold — are on a steep upwards trajectory. Jack Grealish might have had experience of Champions League football by the World Cup, and Dean Henderson might be the answer between the sticks. We shall see.
Penalty death
There is another reason England deserved to win, or at least did not deserve to lose: the inequity of penalty shoot-outs. I feel like I have been living in denial about shoot-outs. Whenever international tournaments have come around, casual supporters will complain about shoot-outs, but I have always defended the status quo, on the basis that alternative mechanisms for determining winners when a match is drawn are no less unfair. At least penalty shoot-outs are a test of the sport’s most important skill, that is, putting the ball in the back of the net.
I have long argued that five penalties per team is not enough: all outfield players should take one before ‘sudden death’ is employed. I also strongly disagree that both teams should have to take their penalties into the same goal, and that only players on the pitch at the end of extra time are allowed to take a penalty. These are arbitrary rules with no sporting rationale. Nevertheless, in tournament football, matches do have to be decided on the day somehow, so the competition can proceed.
Finals are different. The only reason that finals have to be decided on the day is a commercial one. Replays might cost more money to stage than organisers — and national associations — are able to recoup. This is not a good enough reason. Italy drew in both the semi-final and the final of Euro 2020 (and were arguably the inferior side in both games), yet flew home as champions. Football deserves better.
There are two options. First, replays: the mechanism by which Italy first won the European Championships in 1968 (after winning their semi-final on the toss of a coin). Is there a football fan, or player, on the planet who would not relish the prospect of two evenly-matched teams being given more than one opportunity to figure out how to beat each other? International tournaments in both club and international football have become bloated in early rounds, allowing too many teams into the competition, and expecting them to play each other far more frequently than is warranted. Yet we expect a mere 90 minutes (plus another 30) to be sufficient to determine who the best team of the tournament is.
Second, tournament record. Euro 2020’s finalists had to play six matches to get to the final. This is a long enough series of games to adjudicate fairly which has the better tournament record in advance of the final, based on their win percentage or, if this is identical, goal difference. If the final is drawn, tournament record determines the victor. Wins and goals for/against in the knockout stages could be more heavily weighted than those in the group stages (or not: I am open-minded about this). Either way, this mechanism has the benefit of incentivising all teams to pursue victories in the tournament’s earlier rounds, leading to a more exciting spectacle.
Penalty shoot-outs could still be used after one or more replays, or if tournament records are identical. Ideally, if replays and tournament record were both employed, then penalty shoot-outs would very rarely be required.
National sport
I have to end with the politics. England’s footballers deserved to win Euro 2020. But our nation did not, for all the reasons others have discussed at length. Not everyone is racist, obviously. Not everyone supports or tolerates the Johnson government. But enough of us are, and enough of us do. This government and its supporters in the media have sought to dismiss and denigrate our players for daring to register a protest against racial injustice — before using the team’s success as validation for a right-wing version of England where everybody can succeed as long as they have an appropriate attitude.
On Tuesday lunchtime, I watched a BBC presenter apologise because a black person (Diane Abbott) used the n-word live on air (when discussing the racist abuse received by England’s black players), while a white man (Tory outrider, Tim Montgomerie) was allowed without a hint of censure to tell a black woman that by ‘taking the knee’, black people are themselves responsible for ‘creating divisiveness’.
Maybe the Italians are worse. But that is hardly a comforting thought, and this blast is not about them.
As I have said before, Gareth Southgate deserves credit for speaking out against a sharp turn to the right in British politics, insofar as it denies voice and belonging to the young men he is responsible for. His ‘Dear England’ essay was described as ‘suspiciously well-written’ by a ‘Tory strategist’ in The Financial Times. Southgate is a football person, football people are working class, working class people are thick. Got it.
But Southgate’s centrism is not going to cut it. We cannot simply wait for things to change. And we cannot expect genuine change to be led by a small group of multi-millionaires, no matter how admirable their intentions.
Those of us appalled by racism do, regrettably, have to question whether, by continuing to support England’s national football team, we are doing more harm than good. The team’s success has provided a platform for several young, black people from deprived backgrounds, and their principled manager, to speak out about some of the things that matter to them. But it also allows for a lowest-common-denominator narrative of ‘celebrating diversity’ to stand in the place where radicalism should be.
I really do not know how to square this circle. I would feel better if England’s players actually refused to play, the next time England’s fans boo their own players for political reasons, or boo an opponent’s national anthem. I would feel better if they had criticised not only our government, but Gareth Southgate himself, when he said that the experience of being invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940 was ‘part of the story’ of England’s second-round victory (comments which were praised by The Spectator).
But who am I to tell anybody else what to feel about their own experience of prejudice, or what to do about it?
The main thing that would make me feel better is the presence of a wider political movement genuinely able to steer the conversation kicked off by Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in a progressive direction. But the English left — with its painfully posh and disproportionately white leaders — continues to merely perform radicalism, for shits, giggles and clicks. Not all of the left, obviously. But enough.
The labour movement from left to centre is a vacuum of values when it comes to responding to the rise of English nationalism. It probably goes without saying that Starmerism has nothing of note to offer on this question. But the left — myself included — is doing hardly any better. We are torn between the instinctive internationalism of Corbynism, imagining there’s no countries, while joining Johnson on the bandwagon of Southgate’s team as an emblem of something we like, we are just not sure what.
I think the left’s embrace of England at Euro 2020 says a lot more about class than race. The left stands adrift of England’s multi-racial working class communities, and has convinced itself that a bit of footy bantz might be a path to reacquaintance. I am not accusing anyone of deliberate phoniness: there is something inherently positive about the left’s longing to fill the hole where class solidarity used to be. But this is not going to cut it either, I’m afraid.
The left’s running gag on social media this summer was that England’s victories were advancing the cause of Marxism, because the right accuse BLM, and therefore the knee protest, of being influenced by Marxism. It was funny, I guess. It allowed the left to get on board the bandwagon in a way that felt suitably ironic.
That is fine with me. Nobody wants to miss out on the fun. And football is supposed to be about nothing but fun. I am not so sure it is harmless fun though. International football has always brought out the worst in the English. Now it is channelling some of the good stuff too. But we must not believe that this makes things more okay than they actually are.
In fact, it may be that a failure to match recent highs in Qatar is precisely the excuse the right will use to dismantle the egalitarian infrastructure that is being built, ever so tentatively, on the back of the current England team in men’s football. Euro 2020, in this timeline, is the storm before the hurricane.
I hope I am wrong on every count. That is all I have to say. It has been a blast. I cannot fucking wait for the World Cup.
