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...
Critics wanting a team built around a great creator ignore that successful national sides tend to play without riskThey’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. Related: Liverpool blow as...
Prolific captain has added assists to his game and could thrive in a deeper role in Gareth Southgate’s 3-4-3 formationIt was the second game of Gareth Southgate’s tenure as England Under-21s head coach – away to Finland in 2013 – the team were trailing 1-0 and they needed a creative spark. On the bench was Harry Kane. “Which showed what we know about talent observation,” Southgate says with a smile.Southgate brought him on in the 58th minute, he played him as a No 10 and, nine minutes later, he watched him accept a pass in midfield, squeeze in between two challengers and drift away from a third before releasing Wilfried Zaha with a perfect ball around the full-back. Zaha crossed...
The manager’s conservative style against Denmark shows stodginess is becoming his side’s defining flaw behind a marked lack of progressJust before half-time in Copenhagen on Tuesday night Conor Coady could be heard shouting “Don’t get bored!” at his England teammates as they shuttled the ball across the face of Denmark’s deep defensive lines, keeping possession, waiting for an opening, trying, it turns out, not to get bored.It seemed like an excellent piece of advice at the time. Albeit one that might have been better directed down the ring of pitch-side mics and into the ears of the watching TV audience, weighing up its continued engagement with a match that felt, for much of the 90 minutes, like being lulled into...
The England manager’s softer approach left him apparantly unwilling to criticise two players who had been sent homeThe starting point in the analysis of the latest off-field England crisis, sparked by the decision of Phil Foden and Mason Greenwood to invite two women into the team hotel in Iceland – in breach of Covid‑19 protocols – was provided by Gareth Southgate.The England manager said he had spoken to them before breakfast on Monday about what had happened the day before. “It was as much as anything to establish exactly whether they had put themselves in that situation,” he said. “And then to inform them that they needed to stay separate from the rest of the team and that we would...