It’s the eternal conundrum faced by football coaches.
How do I make one part of my team stronger without making another part weaker?
This is what Gareth Southgate has been trying to do.
He knows, but wouldn’t admit, that most England squads when he played, and since, have lacked ball-holding forwards who can supply assists to the striker.
We used to have Peter Beardsley, Nicky Barmby and Teddy Sheringham playing as half- strikers who could hold it up and pass wide when they couldn’t pass forward.
We’ve lost that now. The only English forward skilful enough to play that role these days is the flicky Lallana, who has been injured for most of the season.
The solution might be this big guy from Lewisham.
Ruben Loftus-Cheek is different to anything else we’ve got.
And he’s ready. And he’s said he wants to leave Chelsea. He came on against Tunisia last Monday night, played confidently, and won the corner from which Harry Kane scored the winner in stoppage time.
Southgate’s England has evolved nicely so far but now needs to find another dimension. We need to be able to slow a game down as well as speed it up. If we progress to the R16 and quarter finals, we’ll be playing far more savvy teams.
Southgate’s assistant coach Steve Holland recently sat down with Fleet Street’s finest and explained how they decided on the way forward.
They studied the structure of the England teams of the Nineties.
He said, “We looked at the Terry Venables Euro 96 team, with Steve McManaman and Darren Anderton as wing-backs and Gary Neville in the back three, and the balance of midfield. We even went back to Bobby Robson, who started with one way of playing in Italia 90 then went to a back three. But rather than it being something he remembered from the past, the process was: what gives us the best chance of not conceding many goals? What gives us the best chance of having more control of the game with the ball? They were the two factors.”
Forgive me if I don’t totally agree with that analysis. What made England quite good at Euro 96 was having three players who could run fast with the ball : Gascoigne, Anderton and McManaman.
That trio made the England team radically different to anything England had offered since 1986. And Gazza, Dazza and Macca were all far better at running with the ball than anybody in the present England squad.
Holland continued: “We watched the matches in the Confederations Cup – Germany, Portugal, Mexico, Chile, some good teams – and tried to envisage how we would look against that kind of opposition. We made some decisions and one of those was a back three. We felt we would be better, with and without the ball, with a back three.”
So there you have it. That’s what their conversations boiled down to : how do we minimise the goals you concede, and how do we maximise the our attacking chances when we have possession.
They went for Henderson holding the middle, plus wingbacks, plus Alli, Sterling and Lingard making rapid runs into the box to support Kane.
Southgate noticed the competitive athleticism of his boys. That’s why he decided to use that quality to dominate key zones of the pitch. Because football is not just a game of running and passing, ist’s a game of running at the right time, of passing and shooting at exactly the right moment.
How precise are England’s attacks right now? Not very.
That’s why we don’t score from open play. We are not quite skilful enough to play at that speed. Sterling needs De Bruyne and Silva and Sane to give him a perfect final ball, and Kane & Alli need Christian Eriksen. Both of Kane’s goals came from set pieces .
England need more variations, more fluency, more gears
I believe Loftus-Cheek can make us less one-dimensional.
Always remember that successful World Cup teams find their best-balanced eleven during three tournament, not before it.
And the best managers are sometimes radical. In 1970. Mario Zagallo had two left-footed midfielders, Gerson and Rivelino and decided to play both. Brazil beat Italy 4-1 in the final
Alf Ramsey was an original thinker when he won the title for Ipswich, and in 1966 he decided to use Alan Ball and Martin Peters alongside Bobby Charlton, plus Nobby Stiles, who played in Bobby Moore’s position for Manchester United.
Alf used Nobby as a midfield marker and ball-winner: a masterstroke.
Ball was busy, always available, kept the game moving, knitted the team together, while the tall and positionally astute Martin Peters used to ghost into scoring positions. Alf, who never said anything memorable, once announced that, “Martin Peters is ten years ahead of his time.”
I’m convinced that Loftus-Cheek and Dele Alli can play together. If we beat Panama, they will play together. And I’m looking forward to seeing that.
The real action starts when the World Cup is reduced to 16 teams. I’m engaging intermittently with these preliminaries. Only Croatia have turned me on so far. And Diego Costa, as always.