Jesse Lingard in a World Cup semi-final?! How is England manager Gareth Southgate ever criticised?
Date published: Wednesday 7th December 2022 8:58 -World Cups bring out the worst kind of casual football fan. You’ve heard them. The man on the tube loudly proclaiming that actually, Jordan Henderson ‘does nothing’. The woman in the pub interrupting everybody to say that Harry Kane is dropping too deep. Yer da saying, well, anything. And most will be heard at some point this week saying that England lose against ‘the first decent team they play’.
This is not an example of how England always lose against ‘the first decent team they play’; this is an example of how Southgate had begun to make the England whole somehow greater than its ill-balanced constituent parts. That team had no right to be in a World Cup semi-final. It had a 33-year-old winger at wing-back and our great ‘what if’ of that semi-final was ‘could Danny Welbeck have done a job down the channels?’.
There is understandably giddiness about the strength of England’s attacking options in this tournament, but the upgrade in midfield from Henderson-Alli-Lingard to Henderson-Rice-Bellingham is extraordinary.
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