Harry Kane and Gareth Southgate continue to be hit with England fan pelters despite getting to a semi-final.
I think a lot of the reason for adverse reaction to England getting to a semi-final is that normally it’s fan apathy verging on typically-English pessimism, but this time out Southgate’s own decisions created anger even before things kicked off.
Ye gods the only players who have set up our captain are a defender who mis-controlled a clearance, and Ivan Toney who Kane is keeping out of the side. Beyond that, there was the utterly free header he couldn’t even get on target against Slovakia, or the header sent straight at the keeper against Serbia.
No subs ahead of the 60th minute: so what if your captain is playing pointless hollywood balls from the full-back position. Football is a fairly simple game, and outside of Barca playing the world’s best ever player as a false nine, victory tends to go to the side that’s better in both boxes. If anyone doubts the benefits of youth team success, just look at France and Spain. Prior to 1998 and 2008 respectively, these nations were similar to England: massive footballing nations with a barren historical record of success. They then reformed their grass roots set up that led to winning youth tournaments before translating into success for their senior sides.
My own opinion is that Southgate is frittering away an opportunity of a lifetime to herald a period of English success because he is incapable of properly leveraging the benefits of this new era provided by England’s youth teams, and is paralyzed by the fear of always looking backward at a past that this England team should have moved on from by now – namely an acceptance of getting outplayed as a team by pretty much everyone they come up against, because our record wasn’t that good before...
It’s difficult to pinpoint my favourite part. Was it when he attributed the motivation of the growing anti-Southgate narrative to rebellion against the manager’s apparent liberalism? Or was it the grossly offensive assertion that Britain standing against Adolf Hitler was due to “the people’s hatred of foreigners telling us what to do”?
Fast forward ten months and the fans have expressed their disgruntlement again, however this time it’s for purely footballing reasons. It’s against the England manager taking zero fit left backs to a major international tournament, playing a right back in midfield instead of a midfielder, sitting back every time we score and winning one of our last six games , despite playing nobody higher than 19th in the FIFA world rankings.
England can have the same progression. We have some genuinely world-class players in our squad who could have lit up this tournament under different circumstances. The FA must now be similarly brave and try to bring somebody in with fresh ideas.
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