The men’s team’s 1,000th international game comes on Monday against a nation that is fighting for its freedomI played six major tournaments from 2004 to 2014: three World Cups and three European Championships. Euro 2012 took place in Poland and Ukraine. We played the group stage in Kharkiv and Lviv. Ukraine has a great football culture – that was noticeable.It has also had great footballers. Andriy Shevchenko, Igor Belanov and Oleg Blokhin were Europe’s footballers of the year. Valeriy Lobanovskyi, the legend of the Dynamo Kyiv bench, continues to influence European football; many system coaches refer to him. In 2001, when I was making my way towards the professional team at Bayern Munich, Germany had a difficult task against Ukraine...
This shameful and hurtful act in response to taking the knee before the game only adds to the fraught buildup to Euro 2020Romania’s players agreed to take the knee for the first time at the Riverside Stadium as a gesture of solidarity with their English hosts. As loud, angry boos rang out around the ground the Romanians must have wondered what they’d stumbled into here. What kind of weird, contorted, backwards kind of country is this England anyway? Didn’t they used to be someone? Welcome to England 2021. Divided, belligerent, set against itself – and reduced now by the formalities of a football match to debating the idea of “Englishness” until it falls apart at the seams. Related: Ernesto Valverde:...
Austria’s bothersome bunch of footballers provided a bitty test for England in a friendly which turned into a draining occasionThere was one luminous moment on an otherwise frantic, and frankly quite weird night for England’s footballers at the Riverside Stadium. With 57 minutes gone an odd-job front-line produced a fine surging move to create a first England goal for Bukayo Saka.Up to that point their opponents had been mean, bruising, and, lets face it, quite annoying. Austria’s footballers have one of the great sporting nicknames. Das Team is both accurate and appropriately free of frills. Das Team is a safe, functional thing. Das Team runs and kicks and presses together. Das Team also hasn’t won a game at a major...
Dominic Calvert-Lewin emerged as an alternative to – or foil for – Harry Kane in England’s 3-0 friendly victory over WalesYes, it was only a throwaway friendly at an empty Wembley Stadium between a second-string England and a limited Wales, but … well, maybe there is no “but”. Maybe that’s the end of the sentence. Not every football game has to mean something. Not every event has to be a learning opportunity. And as England scratched their way to a convincing if inoffensive win, the temptation was to wonder whether this lukewarm encounter had changed anything at all. Whether the fabric of the universe had been wrinkled one iota.Still, if there’s anything more tiresome than an England friendly it’s people...
The Manchester United forward may have pushed his case ahead of Sterling as a poor Switzerland were beaten 1-0There were times when, at best, this felt like a persuasive argument for all things Nations League. Uefa’s brainchild at least provides a competitive edge at a time of year when international friendlies are prone to drift, while ring-rusty players attempt to summon some rhythm before the glut of second-half replacements disrupts the tempo still further.Gareth Southgate must have surveyed the scene at the interval and, Danny Rose’s energy and the odd flash of incision from Marcus Rashford aside, wondered if this whole exercise had any discernible merit. The realist in him saw it coming, of course. He knew he had picked...