A talented squad’s involvement could end before a euphoric momentum to match 1996 and 2018 has a chance to buildInternational tournaments are only tangentially about the football – which is probably just as well given how unsophisticated it often is beside the very best of the club game, how sluggish it can appear. They are about the stories and the mood, about the scandal and the drama and, most of all, the sense of shared experience.Russia 2018 was a very good World Cup and an enjoyable tournament to cover, but watching England’s victory over Colombia alone in a drab flat in Samara, surrounded by another journalist’s drying laundry, and seeing the scenes of jubilation from back home, there was a...
Swapping young Dortmund midfielder for the very different Jordan Henderson would bring a vector of risk the England manager must carefully weigh upWhenever England exit a major competition, you often find newspapers and websites – just for a bit of fun – trying to guess what the next tournament squad might look like. Leafing back through the predictions from three years ago, offers a pretty decent snapshot of which players were expected to kick on: those whose ascent was foreseen and those who came largely out of nowhere.Most correspondents correctly expected England’s Euro 2020 squad to be based around the core who went to Russia. The near‑unanimous inclusion of Dele Alli is an indication of just how far his stock...
England have a far worse record than other big sides at holding on to a lead. Can Gareth Southgate fix an endemic problem?Trent Alexander-Arnold clears his lines. And as Austria gingerly gather possession and work the ball backwards, you can see Harry Kane rushing up to start the press, waving the rest of the England team forward to join the charge, which they do. After a series of tentative passes in their own half, Austria’s goalkeeper, Daniel Bachmann, is hastily forced to clear to touch, pursued by a swarm of white shirts. An hour has been played at the Riverside Stadium, and England have just gone 1-0 up.In the alternative history of Wednesday night’s game, this is the point at...
Myopia makes us want our team’s players in Gareth Southgate’s XI but at least he has picked from far and wideThere was a fascinating long read in the Guardian a month ago entitled “The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?”, in which Oliver Burkeman explored the age-old question about whether any of us have any control over anything we do. We are encouraged to consider a fruit bowl containing an apple and a banana. You feel hungry, you choose the banana. You could have chosen the apple. But you didn’t. Now you are eating a banana. Free will. A decision made. By you and you alone. You have successfully consumed one banana. Related: England’s squad for Euro 2020: Southgate’s...
After some England supporters booed the anti-racism action this is an important moment for white peopleIt was at the League One play-off final on Sunday when I experienced it for myself. We were getting ready for the game, going through the now familiar pre-match ritual of players taking the knee, when there was a roar across Wembley. A section of the crowd, not nearly half but much more than an isolated pocket, were booing as hard as they could. After seconds of shock I started to clap, as did a number of other people. It was the only thing I could think to do to drown out the noise, but it was too late.The booing had happened before, at the...