With just one more warm-up game to play after that – against Costa Rica – the Three Lions’ preparation will soon be over and they’ll soon be lining up against Tunisia in Volgograd.
Sven-Goran Eriksson’s Euro 2004 team, for instance, was packed full of talent, but suffered from imbalance as he insisted on playing Paul Scholes on the left side of midfield, while two attacking players – Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard – played in the middle without a holding man to protect them.
To succeed in Russia, Gareth Southgate must avoid this temptation. He’s already shown that he seems to know the system he wants to use – three defenders across the back, two wing-backs, and two central holding players behind two attacking midfielders with Harry Kane as the lone striker.
Look at Euro 2016, for instance – England defeated finalists France and Portugal – as well as semi-finalists Germany – in games leading up to the tournament, but once the big games came around they simply couldn’t operate under the pressure, choked, and ended up losing to Iceland in one of the English game’s ultimate low points.
Sounds easy, right? Of course not, but if England want to succeed this time where they’ve failed before, they need to play without fear – in the same way, that their biggest stars like Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling and Jordan Henderson do when they play for their clubs.
England showed poor game management against Russia in Euro 2016 by not pushing for a second goal after Eric Dier’s opener
In past tournaments, England have often struggled when it comes to game management – when to shut up shop, when to push for another goal, or when to change things up when things aren’t going to plan.
It’s important that in this tournament, England learn to use better game management than this if they want to succeed. It’s something the Three Lions have struggled with going back to the Sven-Goran Eriksson era in the early 2000’s, but can Gareth Southgate be the man to change that?
In that tournament, Terry Venables’ side knew exactly when to kill a game off – witness the 4-1 mauling of the Netherlands – and also when to shut up shop, like in their 0-0 draw with Spain which they eventually won in a penalty shoot-out.
World Cup 1986, for instance, saw them infamously beaten by Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’, while both David Beckham and Wayne Rooney fell afoul of some gamesmanship in 1998 and 2006 respectively and found themselves red-carded in crucial knockout games that England went on to lose.
England certainly have the personnel to do this – Dele Alli, Ashley Young and Harry Kane have all been accused of going down a little easily in the past season, while Jamie Vardy’s goal in a recent friendly against Italy – set up by Jesse Lingard’s quick thinking – suggests England are becoming a little edgier.
It’s an issue that’s plagued past England managers on numerous occasions. Euro 2016 saw the best and worst of both sides – Roy Hodgson decided to go for broke against Wales, sending on Jamie Vardy, Daniel Sturridge and Marcus Rashford from the bench in an effort to break the Welsh resistance, and eventually it worked – Vardy and Sturridge scored to give England a 2-1 win.
Gareth Southgate might not have the deepest squad to rely on this time and critics have already stated that he doesn’t necessarily have players who can change a game from the bench. But in Rashford, Jesse Lingard and Ruben Loftus-Cheek – all of whom may not start – he does have a handful of tyros capable of pulling out something special.
