The teenage midfielder shone on an evening altogether more relaxed than the team’s previous appearance at WembleyAndorra at home on a sleepy Sunday evening in north-west London: it is not exactly an occasion that screams of flares up backsides, ticketless fans storming the turnstiles and beer bottles flying through the air on Wembley Way.Unsurprisingly nobody tried to force their way in to watch England’s second string cruise past the world’s 156th best team in a match devoid of any real competitive edge. Instead the mood was light and relaxed for England’s first game at Wembley since the disorder that marred the Euro 2020 final against Italy, almost as if those who were present were the people who had missed out...
Gareth Southgate’s admirably modest team may just offer some form of redemption for World Cup veterans like meBack then – 30 July 1966 – it was pretty well possible to park your car within a minute’s walk of Wembley’s twin towers, and when our Ford Zephyr came to a juddering halt, me clutching the envelope containing our tickets in one hand and my self-constructed union jack flagpole in the other, my dad gave me a talk I had never expected. It was not about the rarity of this moment, the first English appearance in a World Cup final since the tournament began. It was about the opposition team: West Germany. I said I knew they were good. East Germany, by...
Manchester City forward was the one figure in this England team running with real purpose – but his game is still a little misunderstoodWith 58 minutes gone at Wembley, the score 1-0, and all sense of attacking pep drained from England’s fuel cells, an important life lesson presented itself.Just as you can win a tournament game on the small details, by turning this game of rich human variables into a series of managed collisions, so you can also ship a goal from nowhere via a shanked pass from a high‑grade central defender prone to moments of high‑grade dither. Related: Maguire's blast bails out Stones as England scrape nervy win over Poland Related: England 2-1 Poland: Player ratings for Gareth Southgate's...
Playing in a pre-qualifying league with fellow minnows would help them to improve and also benefit more established teamsBy no means the first football grandee to assert that playing international cannon fodder such as San Marino ought to be beneath the England team, Gary Lineker was the most recent and high profile. During the Wembley rout on Thursday, the man who served his country with so much distinction mused aloud on social media, tweeting: “Surely we’ve reached the stage where the lowest ranked nations should play among themselves to qualify for the right to play at this level. It’s become absurd.”While one suspects a younger Lineker would have happily looked past the absurdity of such a mismatch and seen instead...
Sir Alf Ramsey’s side were in decline and England missed out on two World Cups, but Poland taking the draw they needed gave birth to an enduring myth that they were a bogey teamVersion one: England played really well at Wembley, had 36 shots to Poland’s two, conceded to a goal that stemmed from uncharacteristic mistakes by Norman Hunter and Peter Shilton, and were unfortunate to draw 1-1.Version two: England deservedly failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup as they could only draw against Poland, their lack of attacking intelligence exposed by the way they spent the final minutes of the game as they chased a winner endlessly lofting the ball into the box. Related: Ward-Prowse scuttles and shines...