Hansi Flick’s side just lost to Hungary and have no regular source of goals but believe everything will come good in QatarA proud footballing nation on a lean run of just one win in six games. A humiliating defeat at home against Hungary. And above all a sense of stasis and frustration, a lack of creativity, the suspicion that for all the talent and trophies in this team, it remains considerably less than the sum of its parts.Germany and England may share a common predicament, but as they prepare to meet on Monday night only one of these nations is currently wracked by existential crisis. And curiously, it’s not the one that has bombed out of its last two international...
No goal in almost 450 minutes of open play and now relegated, it’s hard to accuse England of peaking too early for World CupWell, it’s a weird World Cup anyway. Does it count? Just a thought, but is it actually too late to boycott? Norway did the T-shirts you know.For Gareth Southgate and England this was another stumbling step towards Qatar 2022. What is the ideal, the perfect prep for these four-yearly moments of destiny anyway? How about not scoring a goal for almost 450 minutes of open play? Can we spin it? How about getting relegated, as England now have been, oddly enough? At the very least it would be hard to accuse Southgate’s team of peaking too early,...
Verdict on England’s manager will be shaped by the next three months so it is time to ask: are his team actually good?Welcome to the reckoning up. Global sport has spent much of the last two years in a state of jet lag, frazzled by bubbles and firebreaks, by dates that aren’t really dates, events that seem to be taking place in the wrong timeline. Well, here comes the centrepiece: Qatar 2022, the one non-negotiable, the fixed point around which this state of flux has revolved.Check the watch in your pocket, still set to Standard Tournament Time, and it’s actually April right now. The World Cup is – cabin crew, seats for landing – less than two months away. And...
Is age, unfamiliarity or deep-seated sexism sweeping me along to the Euro 2022 final without an agonising knot of nerves?In 2014, Cambridge United played Gateshead in the National League play-off Final. Four minutes to go and we were 2-1 up when Ian Miller, our centre-back, went down with a broken ankle. We’d used all our subs. The referee played 10 minutes of injury time. TEN MINUTES. It felt about a year. Gateshead put a header just wide as the clock flicked to 99 minutes. My voice had gone. I could barely breathe. The relief at the final whistle is almost impossible to articulate.Every fan recognises that agonising knot of nerves that goes beyond the pit of the stomach. It is...
Now the Premier League permits five substitutes, the use of specialists against tired opponents will become more commonIt is, of course, essential that we draw the positives. In the modern age that is all you can ever do after defeat, look for learnings to be enacted moving forward. Although it almost seems distasteful to point out something that went right for England after a dismal Nations League campaign that culminated in their worst home defeat since 1928, there was, in the fatigue and the frustration, one vague sliver of a silver lining. It’s not just that Jack Grealish dragged England back into the game away to Germany, it’s that his performance in Munich hinted at a new way of conceptualising...