Critics wanting a team built around a great creator ignore that successful national sides tend to play without risk
They’ll tell you football is a simple game, but it’s not, not really, not at the very highest level. It is still just about possible to win games by telling nine of your outfielders to stay behind the ball and whacking it long to the big bloke or the quick bloke up top, but not often and not consistently.
Top-level club football these days is about complex structures, about pressing at the right time and in the right disposition, about disrupting the internal dynamics of the opposition while keeping your own varied enough that they are hard to disrupt.
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Given the disruption of this season, it has made sense for Southgate to attempt to instil solidity
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