Put out more flags. Dust down the red and white jester’s hat. Root out
the gumshield, the crumpled Yekaterinburg metro map. And prepare to head
once more into that strangely gruelling territory between bruised and
fearful cynicism and the eternal quiver of tournament hope.
England have booked their place at the World Cup in Russia after surely
the most meandering, flaccid qualification victory yet devised by any
England team. Slovenia were beaten by Harry Kane’s goal but make no
mistake – this was both a dreadful game of football and a numbing
spectacle for those loyal supporters still willing to drag themselves
out on a Thursday night to enter the vast money-rinsing concrete
cauldron of the Wembley entertainment complex.
Victory may have sealed qualification, but it also deflated further any
realistic expectations of what might happen when England get there. This
should be of great concern to the Football Association.
There are only so many times even England fans will be prepared to pay
£40 for the pleasure of throwing paper aeroplanes at the pitch, which
brought the loudest cheers of the night right up until Kane’s finish in
stoppage time. At the end England’s players gathered in the centre
circle and wandered around applauding the empty red plastic seats and
the backs of people queuing to leave while the PA burbled gamely about
the prestige friendlies to come. As an image of England football 2017,
and the slow, gilded death for what was once football’s most compelling
theatre, it is probably quite hard to beat.
England were at least terrible in a grimly fascinating way. Gone are the
days when a poor England team sent it long, seeking out the head of
some game forward battering ram.
Here they were terrible in the new style, passing to each other but
setting out with two lumbering central midfield wardrobes shielding a
defence threatened only by its own misplaced passes. In the opening hour
they produced a performance so lacking in purpose and precision it was
like watching a piece of performance art, a 45-minute Warhol-style short
film called Wembley Angst No. 94.
England did improve after the hour mark but by then they had a lot of
ground to make up from a standing start as the game congealed early on
into another game just like the other games. Jordan Henderson had the
ball quite a lot, worrying about from side to side, always looking back
into the ohmic safety of his defence. Midway through the half England
produced a stunningly terrible free-kick routine, working the ball very
slowly backwards and finally teeing it up for Henderson to perform a
spectacular falling-over air-kick on the edge of the area. Grimly,
Slovenia cleared.
Only Marcus Rashford seemed really interested in trying to run forward
quickly. Raheem Sterling ran quite a lot. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain played
like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. And that was pretty much that for the
most soft-pedalled minor chord moment of qualification imaginable, given
a spark of life at the death by Kane’s opportunism.
What now then? One thing is clear. England does not expect. It has been
more than a decade since the national team had the luxury of travelling
in a state of doomed optimism, the mood ever more stricken since that
golden, foolish summer of 2006 when the world was still young, when
Crouchie did the robot with Prince William, and when the idea of some
grand Premier League talent-legacy waiting to be spent died for good on
the fields of Stuttgart, Cologne and Gelsenkirchen.
The challenge now for Gareth Southgate is not to try to reach the World
Cup final. It is to produce a team that people actually want to watch.
This has been a deathly qualification, with only 16 goals scored and a
feeling of having spent endless hours watching England’s furrowed and
fearful back five play a variety of keep-ball.
From here it seems absolutely clear Southgate needs to take a chance, to
chuck out the Dan Ashworth handbook of mind-bogglingly dull and
outmoded possession football, to accept that playing with adventure,
life, pace, and risky attacking vim might revive not just the dwindling
England brand but his own managerial career.
In their current guise, watching England is like watching a 12-round
undercard split decision wrestle-off between a pair of ponderous 15st
taxi drivers, the craft-free double defensive midfield bolt the
managerial equivalent of tucking both your shirt and your vest into your
underpants.
What is the point of playing this way? From here to next summer every
moment of Southgate’s time should be devoted to trying to wring the most
out of what he does have, a spritz of genuine forward talent in Kane,
Dele Alli and Rashford. He needs a midfielder who can pass. And he needs
to trust his defence to carry the ball forward. Success for this team
would involve simply playing with a little freedom, exploring their own
limits and refusing to leave the competition until they have at least
been beaten by a demonstrably superior team. Score some goals. Produce
at least one performance that lets everyone feel giddy and stupid and
deluded for four days in June.
There is a wider issue here about international football itself. When
the away fans in Malta last month sang “we’re s**t” they weren’t angry
or incensed or spoiling for a fight.
They were taking the mickey out of the whole thing: England, us, them,
the enduring disjunct between a domestic league of such screeching
urgency and a national team who have withered in its shadow. Take note,
Gareth. It is when they stop booing you really want to start worrying.
For now England will travel with hope, as ever. But not much of it.
England’s fans had long given up on Thursday’s game against Slovenia at Wembley and were entertaining themselves by launching paper aeroplanes towards the pitch by the time Harry Kane stabbed in a predatory 94th-minute winner. (Reuters)