I watched England’s decades of underachievement marred by menace, capped by 2016’s Iceland defeat. I’m glad I kept goingAs I walk down Olympic Way from Wembley Park tube station on Sunday night, in hope though not expectation, I will think Nice thoughts. About complacency, about comedy, and above all the near-agony of the miles-long trudge away from that French city’s stadium on gout-scarred feet after watching England exit the last European Championship.On 27 June 2016, the national team took decades of underachievement to depths beyond contemplation, losing to an Iceland team in their country’s first major finals, drawing from a population of about 350,000. Or about the aggregate attendance at Premier League matches across a single pre-pandemic weekend. Related: How...
The Manchester City forward has matured as an international player by doing the things he knows he is very good atSquint a little and there was something weirdly retro about England’s victory in Iceland on Saturday night. This was a painful occasion for Gareth Southgate’s under-conditioned team, a game where the neat little touches didn’t stick, where the bounce was off, the grass unkind, the ball filled with helium, where England’s midfield seemed, somehow, to be always facing the wrong way.As the ball was shuttled cautiously across those deep blue defensive lines, this felt a bit like watching old, analogue, square-screened England. We shall remember them (if you really insist), that version of Albion who lived in fear of foreign...
The England debutant showed only flashes of craft in a game where graft was the deciding factorIceland in September: still cold enough to give you the shivers. Four years on from the Gothic horrors of Nice 2016 England came to Reykjavik looking for catharsis. In the event they got ... well, what exactly?Raheem Sterling’s late penalty ensured England took all three points from what was a slow-burn, at times rather painful experience. Gareth Southgate’s team were agreeably dogged, dredging up the sheer effort of will required to win away from home, through a fug of rust, against fiercely committed opponents. On a sunny mid-Atlantic afternoon on Uefa’s most westerly outcrop England had come clanking out of the blocks like a...
Aaron Ramsey return to Wales after a year out, Naby Keïta must step up for Guinea and Iceland will face a frosty reception The build-up to Wales’s remaining qualifiers has been dominated by the dismay that Gareth Bale’s call-up has caused at Real Madrid, where the forward has been on the sidelines for a month nursing a calf injury. Bale’s late winner against Azerbaijan in September proved how influential the forward can be in swinging matches Wales’ way but the returning Aaron Ramsey may be just as important for Ryan Giggs. The Juventus midfielder has been absent for Wales for a year so his return now, with two must-win games ahead, could not be better timed. Having just returned to...
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,...