A tactical tweak against Wales turned England into fun entertainers and for that Southgate deserves huge creditIn praise of Gareth. Can we take a moment to do this now? Can we just suck that sweetness down? Because this was a very good game for England and their manager, a manager who has, for all his success, his status as pretty much the most sensible person currently active in English public life, had a weirdly vitriolic year and a half.It was a good game for Gareth Southgate because England were bad at first, and then they were good, and good thanks to a stroke of tactical switchery that broke the game open. It was good because players Southgate brought in ended...
Great was reduced to a pawn on a chessboard of kings and queens as his side crashed out of World Cup after England loss“You’re going home in the morning,” came the chorus from the England supporters after Marcus Rashford fired in an early second-half free‑kick and again, a little bit louder, when Phil Foden doubled their advantage 98 seconds later. It was salt into the wound for the bank of Wales fans at the other end – six‑and-a-bit blocks of the Red Wall – for whom a first World Cup finals in 64 years has turned out to be a rather dispiriting and demoralising experience. Was it really worth the wait? Gareth Bale will no doubt ponder the same question...
Wales had hoped for exotic World Cup opposition but must now aim to beat neighbours for the first time in 38 yearsI watched Wales’s second game of the World Cup at Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff. The same venue I saw the Strokes, Afrika Bambaataa and Roots Manuva play in my 20s, but there has never been a headliner at Clwb like Wales v Iran. As I walked through Cardiff city centre last Friday morning I saw pubs fill and football fans greet each other, alongside office workers purchasing that pillar of the 21st-century Welsh economy, the Boots Meal Deal. People having a pint at 9.35am because Wales are playing in the World Cup against opposition we haven’t met since 1978....
The World Cup favourites showed enough in their win against Serbia to suggest they can perform well against Switzerland even without their star playerBrazil had a decent start to their 2022 World Cup. The first game of the tournament is always a little bit more difficult. An early wrong turn, a miscontrolled ball or a badly placed pass can dictate the story of the game. A team that wants to go on to win the tournament need to realise that and manage the raw emotions and the overall energy of those first minutes. Brazil did that in their 2-0 win against Serbia. But let’s be careful. The three points does not guarantee anything, not even progress to the knockout stage....
There were no goals until Álvaro Morata and Niclas Füllkrug came on, changing the scoreline if not the outcomeWell, there’s a thing. Maybe there is something to be said for these so‑called experts after all. For 53 minutes of this 1-1 draw Germany and Spain played out a carefully hedged, engrossingly mannered game of football. This was a game of midfield squared, of Big Midfield Energy, a quiet debauchery of midfield.Al Bayt Stadium is essentially a vast illuminated fibreglass tent dumped down in the desert scrub. It was packed here, or almost packed. But at times in the second half it was so quiet in the stands you could hear the air conditioning hiss. This is, it seems likely, not...