The attacking talent Gareth Southgate is keen to use keeps getting bogged down by stodgy and defensive selectionsShortly before half-time at the King Power at Den Dreef Stadium, Harry Kane could be seen scooting back into his own half to take the ball. Ten seconds later he was kicked heavily on an ankle driving through the centre circle. Ten seconds after that Kane was in an inverted left-winger role, cutting in to fire a cross-shot against the lunge of Jason Denayer.Throughout this sequence, a triptych of deep-midfield-Kane, playmaker-Kane and winger-Kane, it was hard not to long for another Kane: the ghost Kane, saving his spring, doing No 9-type things; and not forced to become Kane cubed, both pointlessly ever-present and...
Forget the Nations League: this is a rare opportunity for the England manager to perfect his tactics against superior sidesThere is a website called The Size of Belgium that for more than a decade has been dutifully tracking the Anglophone world’s curiously enduring habit of using the country’s area as a rhetorical unit of measurement. For example, “an area the size of Belgium” is lost globally to deforestation each year, according to the United Nations. The search area for missing flight MH370 was described in several media outlets as “the size of Belgium”. The Lonely Planet guidebook, meanwhile, refers to Yorkshire as “half the size of Belgium”.How did Belgium ascend to this exalted status? Not, you have to assume, through...
Mason Mount’s work without the ball and technical ability have justified his England place all while suffering unfair scornTwo steps forward, one step back. In a way, this has been the story of Gareth Southgate’s England in microcosm. Stirring progress followed by chastening tournament defeat; goodwill earned and then squandered; the heartening emergence of Conor Coady and Tyrone Mings tempered by the sharp decline of Harry Maguire. And here again a broadly encouraging international week curdled at its climax, defeat to Denmark an unhappy epilogue after the wins over Wales and Belgium. Related: Denmark and Eriksen make England pay for Maguire's reckless lunges Related: Nations League roundup: Williams axis strikes late again as Wales top group Related: Scotland march on...
England compensated for the lack of a cultured technical midfielder by turning the game into a wrestling matchIt wasn’t the perfect performance. Perhaps, in a weird way, that was for the best. Imagine the nonsense we would have had to put up with for the next eight months if England had beaten the world’s No 1 team – and the home of the European parliament to boot – with a perfect performance. The hoopla. The hubris. The jingoistic fervour. The Michel Barnier memes. Lather up Europe, our brave lads are coming for you.Yet in the absence of perfection, you suspect Gareth Southgate will be content simply to pile up results. And this was a very decent result against a good...
In passing an international century, Ronaldo has constructed a monument to himself that may never be surpassedEat, sleep, score against Armenia, repeat. And repeat. Then repeat again for the next 13 years until there are no more rungs left to climb, and the entire Fifa-mapped world, from Oceana to Concacaf, has been coloured a shade of Cristiano.Yes, I watched all 101 of Cristiano Ronaldo’s international goals so you don’t have to. It was a brilliantly absorbing watch too, a flick-book version of the journey from there to here, with a sense of the past beginning to stir, older Ronaldos coming into view, Ronaldos beyond the Ronaldos. Related: Juve’s punt on Sarri and Ronaldo typifies superclubs’ vast carelessness | Jonathan Wilson...