One pass was all it took. Eleven minutes in to England’s 2-0 win in Ireland on Saturday, Trent Alexander-Arnold picked up the ball about 15 yards outside his own penalty area. He saw Anthony Gordon making a run behind the Ireland defence from the left and drilled a perfectly weighted 60-yard pass for him. Although Gordon was thwarted by the Ireland goalkeeper Caoimhín Kelleher, and Harry Kane had an effort blocked as the ball was returned to the middle, Declan Rice then smacked in the loose ball to give England a 1-0 lead.
Immediately, social media was aflame. This was what England had been missing. This was what might have happened had Gareth Southgate not been so obsessed with picking Kyle Walker. This was what happened when you took the handbrake off. Quarter of an hour later, a rat-a-tat of passes through the Ireland defence led to Jack Grealish, who had been left out of England’s squad for the Euros, sweeping in a fine second. Again the outcry, less in support of England’s interim manager, Lee Carsley, than against Southgate, his predecessor.
There were, undoubtedly, some promising aspects from Saturday’s win for England. Alexander-Arnold is arguably the best English passer of a ball and Carsley found a way to accommodate him. The use of Levi Colwill, more naturally a centre-back, on the left of the back four meant that when Alexander-Arnold pushed forwards, the remainder of the defence shuffled across in effect forming a back three, offering solidity.
Similarly, Gordon, who was used for just six minutes at the Euros, was a persistent threat breaking beyond Kane. Carsley has got the best out of the Newcastle wide man before, using him as a mobile centre-forward when England Under-21s won their European Championship last year. One of the problems the England senior team have had recently is the absence of a player running beyond Kane meaning that when he dropped deep, one of the great strengths of his game, one of the attributes that makes him unusual for such a prolific goalscorer, it means England lost significant goal threat.
This is all good. Football isn’t about a blueprint or a template. There isn’t one right way to play; indeed, if individual quirks and idiosyncrasies can be incorporated, it makes a side less predictable and thus harder to set up against. If Alexander-Arnold can become for his country what he is for Liverpool, a playmaking right-back, and Gordon can offer England a threat in behind opposing defences – and the two seemed to dovetail nicely – that is all to the good.
But to think the success of the two policies in the opening half-hour on Saturday means Southgate should have been deposed earlier is as daft as believing Carsley isn’t suitable for the England job because he doesn’t sing the national anthem. (In the same way Southgate had Steve Holland to offer tactical insight, perhaps Carsley could bring Emeli Sandé on to his backroom staff to sing the anthem?) Rather than Alexander-Arnold and Gordon, at the Euros Southgate selected Walker and Phil Foden, the right-back and left-sided forward for Manchester City, who have won the Premier League in six out of the last seven seasons. Omitting Alexander-Arnold and Gordon wasn’t some eccentric whim on Southgate’s part.
When fully fit, Walker may return; he is a fine right-back, whose pace has regularly kept England out of the trouble. Foden did not have the best Euros, but he was probably England’s best player in the first half of their semi-final win over the Netherlands, the period in which they played their best. Gordon, it might be pointed out, was dreadful in the final warm-up game when England lost to Iceland. Jude Bellingham will offer a further complication when he returns from injury. For a manager, this is the curse of England’s strength in depth: there will always be a long list of players who could have played, who will in defeat become players who should have played.
Beating mid-ranking sides like Ireland, frankly, has not recently been England’s problem; it’s the elite who keep beating them. That’s a problem Mauricio Pochettino will face if and when he takes charge of the USMNT: playing the likes of New Zealand and Panama is all very well, but it’s not necessarily great preparation for taking on, say, the Netherlands or Belgium at a World Cup. Equally as he seeks balance, there will always be critics ready to pounce at the first slip-up because their favourite has been omitted.
Ireland’s Icelandic manager, Heimir Hallgrímsson, (who, for those keeping count, did not sing the Irish anthem) tightened his side up in the second half which not only made Alexander-Arnold and Gordon less effective, but also raised further doubts about the Rice-Kobbie Mainoo pairing at the back of midfield. That is something that requires work, with Lille’s Angel Gomes, who came on with 13 minutes remaining, an intriguing potential solution.
The nature of international football is that, because there is less of it, every game is overscrutinised, but there are few panaceas. One player, or one tweak, is very rarely the solution, which is why managers have to be good at blocking out the noise and remaining true to their vision. And as Carsley has found in the past few days, the noise often has very little to do with football.
This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition
