One England player like a ‘latter era’ Raheem Sterling under middle-manager Gareth

Is anybody immune from England criticism? Did Saka really do much more than Foden? And Gareth Southgate gets more pelters.

Send your views on England to theeditor@football365.com

The real issue
Most people are ignoring the most important topic of the final, which was how annoying Alan Shearer’s commentary was.
Dave (Winchester, England)

How has Saka escaped censure while Kane gets stick?
I read this site (particularly the mailbox) much less these days, mainly because of the propensity for band-wagon jumpers and club bias completely clouding any sane thoughts. Today’s missives, on a scan through, are entirely predictable. But before all the knee-jerk and agreement with supposed experts, who spend a lot of time simply repeating each other’s opinions to them feel relevant, please consider alternative ‘narratives’.

Kane – I’m not sure how Harry has so easily become the scapegoat for a series of poor team performances. Being asked to play as a pure no. 9 (which everyone wanted, lest we forget), he relies on service from competent playmakers. Unfortunately, no one in the team has shown they could match his own passing ability, hence extremely few accurate or dangerous balls into the penalty area. No surprise that he only managed three goals really.

Saka – yes, a good bit of jinking left and right, but when did we start thinking this was actually dangerous and effective play, with a pitiful amount being translated into end product? Kane was definitely quiet, but at least he bagged those goals in the end. Quite what his dereliction of duty was about with the two Spanish goals, I cannot fathom. Saka has bags of talent yet seemed afraid to really show it bar one goal. Kudos for the brave penalty, but he has at least been taking loads of them for the past couple of seasons since Euro ’21. Felt like he was playing like a latter-England career Raheem Sterling.

Foden – the best no.10 on the planet according to some (ahem, Micah). He started 7 games and came up with zero goals, zero assists. Way to go. If we lacked for creativity and fluidity, he’s the one player we might have expected to make us tick. It was so far from happening.

Rice – I thought he was the one real irreplaceable player in the team. I was shocked at how sketchy his performances were. His passing was a mile off, his positional compass gone awry, and that semi-final brain fade to allow the Dutch goal was the culmination of a very, very average few weeks. His position should not be nailed down, and he was shown up by Mainoo’s stellar efforts.

Defence – we came in thinking this was the area of concern but Stones was consistently good, our best outfield player in the final. Guehi had his raw moments but stepped up magnificently overall. Konsa deputised expertly. The experienced Walker looked like the weak link at times, certainly positionally.

Pickford – the guy is rarely singled out for praise but there are so many moments where he keeps us in games that we should be dead and buried in, against less talented sides. Let’s give him his due for once. He’s been an excellent servant for the national team.

Gareth – thank for you tremendous efforts, you’ve put your heart and soul into this for 8 years. Put your feet up and enjoy the rest, whilst you may not be the Pep-level master that everyone desires, you probably don’t deserve brickbats that are flung your way and will only increase with every match we don’t win by three goals.
Ben, West Sussex

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The England players met in the middle
Haven’t been in the mailbox much recently but I’m back to spoil everyone’s day. Reading the various mails have made for a fun game of ‘guess which club they support’ based on how positive or (more commonly) how negative they are.

Gareth Southgate does have a point when he says that there is only so much he can do from the sideline in situations like, for example, when Spain are playing keep ball and the England players can’t win it off them. International football isn’t the arena for grand tactical visions, it’s a place where players have to rely on their natural talent a bit more.

I think it was after the last Euros final but on the Football Cliches podcast they discussed the theory that any outfield player should be able to do a job in any position for a few minutes, hence Marcus Rashford coming on at right-back, but there’s a logic to playing a naturally superior player in an unfamiliar role over someone with less talent but more familiarity.

I can see why you’d justify that for Phil Foden over Anthony Gordon on the left of a front three, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily agree with it as a hard and fast rule.

In a lot of cases for England, the players have met somewhere in the middle. Jordan Pickford, Marc Guehi, Kobbie Mainoo and Cole Palmer have all played at a level higher than their midtable clubs would suggest, whereas Harry Kane, Declan Rice and Kyle Walker, mainstays in Champions League teams, all fell short of that level.

Having surpassed Wayne Rooney as the all-time top scorer in the England men’s team, Kane emulated the Plymouth Argyle gaffer by continually dropping deeper and deeper into midfield in search of the ball, instead of staying high and occupying the opposing centre-backs. I don’t think England necessarily played better after he’d been substituted in either the semi-final or final, but they certainly benefitted from Ollie Watkins’s approach to centre-forward play.

This bit is probably just for me and Dave Tickner but the talk of changing of the guard in this England team coincides with a similar sort of thing happening to the men’s cricket team. Jimmy Anderson (aged 42) was told at the start of the summer he would only be playing one test match as England sought to assess their fast bowlers for an Ashes series in two years’ time.

However, his immediate replacement for the second test appears to be Mark Wood, who will be 36 when that Ashes series starts and not really under consideration. Whether or not Southgate continues in his role, there is likely to be a clamour for a clear out of older players in World Cup qualifying. Walker seems to be the first name out the door, with Kieran Trippier and Kane not far behind him. However, the danger of getting rid of too many senior squad members all in one go is that there’s not a lot of experience to call on and it’s that experience the younger stars need to learn from as part of passing the torch.

Above all, there are a few moments of brilliance from this tournament that will live in the memory, but not too many. For now, the screen burn seems to be either an England defender with their arms up in exasperation at having no one to pass to, or a player from any team cutting in off the wing and shooting over to the irritation of several better-placed teammates.

As for England, there’s genuinely no shame and only a tiny amount of disappointment in losing in the final: it’s not fair to spend an entire tournament hailing Spain as the best side in the competition only to then complain when they beat England. It’s just how it goes sometimes.
Ed Quoththeraven

A baffled Welshman on Southhgate’s shortcomings
Neutral Welshman here. Not an England supporter in any way, but also not an ‘anyone but’ either.

Spain were deserving tournament winners. Excellent players, cohesive, united, well coached.

Southgate however represents LinkedIn in football manager form. Powerpoint, team building, inspirational quotes, but utterly devoid of substance.

A HR away day over six weeks of football tournament. Not a flow or flip chart left unused.

The nauseating, extraneous, high-performance podcast bo!!ocks – the psychologists, the marginal gains, the diffusers that smell like St George’s Park – it’s all so tedious.

Particularly when you don’t take a fit left back.

Nor have a plan for a functioning midfield before or during the tournament.

And insist on playing an unfit captain.

Display weak and fearful in game management.

Seemingly terrified of trying anything new.

Christ, any of us who have worked in big companies recognise the vibe. The disingenuous, brittle jibberish about values, ethics, teams and outlook. But ask a direct question, offer a fundamental challenge, require something radical, and you see the worried smile as they ‘stick a pin in that’ before we ‘circle back around’.

Southgate is the perfectly likeable office middle manager you indulge every couple of months, but who everyone knows is not trusted to make any real decisions.

I’d be exasperated as an England fan, but as I’m not, I’m going to put the kettle on.
Mikey P, Cardiff

In the words of Theresa May: Nothing has changed
I had my first cathartic, post England heartbreak email to F365 published in the aftermath of England’s quarter final loss to Portugal in 2004, at the tender age of 16. Mailbox, this ain’t my first rodeo. I imagine many readers had several more disappointing tournaments long before I entered consciousness.

But here we all are, unified by that one thread of continuity that transcends the decades: the inability of the English team to get it over the line. We have undulated between the valiant defeats of the Venables, Sven and Southgate periods, sandwiching those eras of humiliation under McClaren and Hodgson.

I find it fascinating, that, reading my email from 2004, I bemoaned our fear of going for it in extra time, bringing on the likes of Phil Neville and Owen Hargreaves in preference to the exciting talents of Joe Cole. 20 years later, has anything really changed? Yes, we are a unified group. Yes, we have shaken the hoodoo of penalties. We have dropped petty club rivalry spats in preference of a shared team spirit. But group hugs and team jacuzzi sessions don’t score any points in the Euros or a World Cup.

Every conclusion we make must be contextualised within the understanding that the best team won. They played exceptional football throughout a tournament where England didn’t put in a performance until the semi final- and even that was only half a game, won by a moment of individual brilliance in the dying minutes. As a nation, we seem to approach international football with the belief that anything less than strolling to victory is abject failure.

Whilst I ultimately agree it is time for a change of manager, we should remember that both France and Germany fell to this Spanish side on their charge to the final. Have the Germans concluded that Nagelsmann has taken Germany as far as he can? Is Deschamps now a spent force because he has lost the World Cup final and a Euros semi on the trot? Or do other nations, perhaps, understand that there can only be one winner in a competition of multiple excellent teams?

Our English exceptionalism, our narcissistic self obsession, leads us to believe that these tournament victories are a forgone conclusion. Have Arsenal sacked Arteta because twice in a row now he hasn’t got Arsenal over the line? I could go on, and whilst I too feel the time for change has been reached, we must always frame our results within the context they were achieved – the second best team in Europe, whilst not even playing particularly well, is certainly not failure. Yes, we have brilliant young players – but so do France, Spain, Germany, and in the World Cup Argentina and Brazil. Ours are not better purely because they happen to be English.

Yet, despite this much needed reality check, we must conclude that Southgate has served his time. The counter argument to my points above is that we have not failed despite reaching our maximum potential, we have failed whilst, particularly in this tournament, severely under performing. The tactical failures, and inability to adapt or change, are there for all to see.

Southgate has shoehorned Phil Foden into this English side as a left winger, despite Foden being a free roaming attacking midfielder. It did not work.

Southgate later switched Bellingham to the left, isolating a player on the periphery who has been a lethal threat for Real Madrid all season. It did not work.

Southgate has, after much clamour, taken a youthful squad to a tournament full of exciting potential. But then he has been far too afraid to use them. Cole Palmer is too good to make cameo appearances. Trent is too good to sit on the bench – or be shoehorned in as a central midfielder.

Why bring Anthony Gordon if you do not trust him and won’t use him? All this did was actually reduce our ability to freshen the team- starting virtually the same line-up match after match, further exhausting the likes of Bellingham and Kane who faded into oblivion by Berlin.

Whilst the likes of Rashford, Grealish, Maddison and Sterling did not have great campaigns at club level – they may well have offered something different on the left if Southgate would have felt confident bringing them onto the pitch. Adam Wharton, it seems, was taken not for his ability to control a game or offer a central midfield fulcrum when legs tired, but for an all inclusive month in a German Wellness centre. I hope he enjoyed the saunas, because he didn’t get to enjoy a moment of playing football.

Where we go next, only the FA can decide. It is vital we get the right person, and we must be careful what we wish for. Whilst there is need for change to get over the line, we are in huge danger of going backwards. Final day defeats could easily give way to embarrassing last 16 exits once more. Penalty prowess could return to acknowledged defeat before a ball is kicked.

Dressing room harmony could return to blue on red spats, egos and division. I fear names like Potter or Howe will not get these elite players over the line. I cannot see Guardiola risking his spotless reputation on the haphazardness of international football – and certainly not for England. Klopp would be a coup, but it is hard to see managing England fitting with his Liverpool legacy – and there is a sneaking suspicion he is waiting for Ancelotti to retire at Madrid. If the right man is not available right now, then we are better to bide our time – there is no meaningful qualifier until spring 2025.

England’s day will come. But not this year.
Mike, Oxford

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The standard Liverpool reaction
A few points on Euros finish.

1) England never should’ve made the final. Had they faced anybody good in the knockouts, they’d have been long gone. The miracle that placed all of Spain, France, Germany and Portugal on the other side will never happen again, either. They had their chance.

2) Southgate’s management was a disaster. Leaving a passing and dead ball talent like Trent on the bench was astonishing intentional ignorance. He’s basically Beckham – stick him out on the right touchline if you have to, but use him in a team crying out for creativity.

3) Keep glorifying that average Pickford if you like, I guess. His ball distribution is atrocious. Any other keeper who is as good a shot-stopper but who could actually pass the ball out would be a huge improvement. But I get that he defines the Englunder Brexit poster boy.

4) Keep playing scared football, you brave lions. See how that works out – again.

5) I suggest trying Southgate at United for a nice, long spell. Give him lots of time.

6) Spain had already won three tournaments (now four) since England’s last trophy, so maybe it really is “(com)going home.”

Glad Trent’s well-rested and presumably raring to go for us and show what he can do.
Scott, LFC, Toronto

MORE ENGLAND REACTION FROM F365
👉 16 Conclusions on England losing the Euro 2024 final: Southgate out, Kane abysmal, Rice poor, drop Walker
👉 One ‘terrified’ and ‘comical’ England player sums up the Southgate era
👉 Dunk to Guehi via Kane, Bellingham and Watkins: Ranking all 26 England players at Euro 2024