Change is good but the England manager’s tactical tinkering is starting to feel reckless as the Euro 2020 defeat in Prague shows“At that moment, Svejk looked as if he had fallen down from the skies from another planet and was now looking with a naive wonder at a new world, where people were demanding from him idiotic questions he had never heard before.” Jaroslav Hasek’s great Czech comic novel The Good Soldier Svejk follows its amiable hero through the contortions of central Europe during the first world war. Its real subject, though, is human folly, human conflict and the absurdity of human attempts to manage the chaos. At which point cut to Mason Mount on Friday night in Prague, another...
Prague steels itself for England’s fans, Ireland may have a new hero in Aaron Connolly and Scotland are desperate to find goalsIn what looks certain to resemble the world’s most unedifying stag party, an estimated 6,000 England fans will descend on Prague to watch Gareth Southgate’s team take on the Czech Republic. Unsurprisingly designated as a “high risk” fixture, this Friday night game will attract no shortage of thirsty visitors to the Czech capital, hellbent on making a weekend of it in a city renowned for the cheapness of its beer and myriad other nocturnal delights. Scheduled to kick off at 8.45pm local time, when more patriotic fans will have had all day to occupy the city’s Old Town Square,...
The Chelsea midfielder often looks the part but put in a couple of frustrating displays and Gareth Southgate has other optionsThere comes a point when a Ross Barkley run starts to feel like Ross Barkley’s career: rich in promise, low on substance. The signature Barkley burst certainly looks good when it starts. It certainly feels exciting. It definitely feels as if something important is going to happen when he picks up the ball in his own half and sets off on a charge into opposition territory.Then the wait begins. The momentum stalls. The deeper Barkley goes, the less threatening he looks. One finds oneself willing him on, urging him to pick the right pass, but the moment slips away and...
Individual mistakes that gifted Kosovo goals will worry Gareth Southgate but there is no reason to think they will be repeated come the real thing next summerWhen Gareth Southgate sat down to meet the media in the Terry Paine lounge at St Mary’s on Tuesday night, the topic in hand was human error.Such a debate would normally offer great insight for all of us, given our proclivity for mistakes in the most unexpected (and expected) of circumstances. But this was specifically to do with the errors of human footballers, and the very best footballers at that, so the learnings for mere mortals were limited. However much you might wish to put yourself in Declan Rice’s shoes, in a very real...
In the 4-0 win against Bulgaria, England’s forwards proved too hot to handle and again underlined their potential as the team breezes through Euro 2020 qualifyingIt wasn’t thrilling. It wasn’t much of a spectacle. There must be broader concerns about the diminution of the Euro qualifiers as a spectacle since the expansions of the finals. Not that football has ever shown much inclination to worry about such matters, but there probably should be qualms as well about how many central and eastern European sides seem simultaneously to have suffered such a decline. But for England the lack of drama in Saturday’s 4-0 win over Bulgaria is itself an indication of how positive the present situation is for them. Related: Harry...