Imagine Messi and Alvarez running at Maguire and Stones? ‘Average’ Gareth has avoided that

Has a disaster been averted by England losing to France? Lionel Messi would destroy this England side, who are managed by Mr Average it seems.

Keep your mails coming to theeditor@football365.com

Disaster averted
It could have been Lionel Messi and Julian Alvarez running on Harry Maguire and John Stones in the World Cup Final.

What’s the phrase I’m looking for? Be thankful for small mercies? Or just Merci?
Terry, Texas

Messi business
After Messi sent Gvardiol for a bagel while providing an assist for Alvarez’ second goal, is it true that the defender’s value has diminished by half?
Gitonga

They have now
Why do I just know the words Petr Cech and Luis Garcia will make an airing in today’s mailbox.
Lee (looking forward to the final already) Hornsey

How good are World Cups though?
How good are international tournaments, especially World Cups? I was proper looking forward to the game between Argentina and Croatia tonight. I haven’t looked forward to watching a Premier League, or Champions League, and DEFINITELY not a poxy League One game (Charlton fan), in so long that I’d forgotten what it felt like. My football whatsapp chat has been pinging non stop for a month, with everyone loving it. Slightly annoying actually. But during the season, it’ll be once every 2 months when someone wins an accumulator.

International tournaments are so special. For all the talk of Champions League being the pinnacle now, and the globalisation of football meaning there are no surprises anymore, well, every time these tournaments roll round that is quashed. The styles – Netherlands just battering ramming their way to those late goals against Argentina; Morocco absolutely smashing and grabbing their way past the big boys; Spain with the passing exhibitions; the counter attacks, the class, the mistakes, the chaos, the colour, everything. Yes, the Champions League and the Prem has the money and everyone plays lovely anaemic football resulting in exactly the same teams at the latter stages every 9 months. I have found for a long time now it difficult to get excited about this. There is nothing like what we are watching now. Despite the off the field madness, international football (on the pitch) is still the purest form of football left.

Players like Ziyech (just using him as an obvious example but there are many more) who are without doubt committed, supreme professionals. You do not get to where he is without being so. But he plays like he will literally rather die on the pitch than lose a game of football when playing for his country. He cares when he plays for Ajax or Chelsea, but not like this. It is fascinating.

The sheer pressure on players is like nothing else. If a player misses a penalty in a big Premier League or Champions League game it is devastating. It may well cost their team that year. BUT, everyone knows in the back of their minds, that within 9 months the same teams and players will all be there again, with a chance to redeem themselves. If you miss a chance or make a mistake in a crucial world cup knockout game, which costs you, then there is a very high chance that there will be zero chance of redemption. That is it. It is unimaginable pressure. This could be a reason the quality isn’t always the highest, but Jesus H it’s damn well more exciting than anything else. Actual, proper sporting drama.

Despite the fact FIFA are a flipping disaster, I just pray they know how special it is and don’t fix what ain’t broke. I wish I didn’t enjoy it this much, because that means maybe I’m sports-washed now? I still think homophobic, women hating, murderous dictatorships are bad, does that count for anything? Oh God.
George

Southgate is a failure with England
For three days now I’ve done my best not to get involved, I’ve typed comments and not posted, e-mails and not hit send but if I don’t do something soon, I think my head will explode, especially after Tuesday morning’s mailbox!

Gareth Southgate is a poor manager, of this there can be no doubt. I cannot fathom where the praise or the support he has received, comes from. He was praised today for “sticking to a back four”, wtf! He only adopted this formation when the amount of stick his 3-4-3 “double pivot” preferred option had been shown to be awful, he selected Foden because of the outrage of him missing out and the fact that Sterling was unavailable.

His game management (yes BW it is a skill) is and always has been dreadful, what on earth was Grealish brought on for with less than 90 seconds to go? Was it to run down the clock for the French? Was it because his crystal ball showed Rashford scoring and Grealish being fresh legs for extra-time? Why was Sterling (been at home for 5 days and not trained) brought on ahead of, scored in two previous games, Rashford?. Mount for Henderson was a reasonable shout but 1 good decision out of 3 is probably in line with the rest of his management. These were the panic reactions of a man out of his depth.

“But he’s our most successful manager of all time”, some say. Being better than people who are very poor (I’m thinking Taylor, McLaren, Hodgson) does not make you good!

He achieved a bare minimum most of the time. At the end of the tournament, if all the managers were ranked in order of success-failure, where would he appear, my guess is somewhere in the middle, ahead of the Germany, Spain, Brasil, Portugal and possibly after today and tomorrow, France and Argentina managers. But behind Morocco, Australia, Japan, Croatia, Saudi Arabia or Tunisia. (oh sorry, ahead of Martinez also!), so stuck in the middle with the “we never expected anything else” brigade.

Comments like “it’s fine margins”, “you need luck” etc etc, really bug me, where or when is our fine margin, our bit of luck (Russian linesman excepted), we don’t have them because we don’t have the belief, we don’t have the confidence, we don’t have the desire, things the Manager is tasked with instilling in his team.

Southgate has failed on all these fronts and not for the first time.

And in true F.I.F.A./Boris style, the F.A. are considering giving him a “massive” pay rise!
Howard (Southgate you’re a con, please don’t carry on, you have f&*ked us all again) Jones

Thanks Gareth but also goodbye Gareth
I think there’s a lot to admire about Southgate and I found him a breath of fresh air at the start of his England career, just what we needed at the time. Since then though I think he’s shown his limitations and that England probably require someone different to move even further forward.

I don’t think that changing would guarantee success, this is England after all, but I think not changing will guarantee no success.

I know some people will argue that Gareth has succeeded but for me the only success for a team like England, that has tasted success albeit a long time ago, is to win.

At the moment it’s a bit like being a Premier eague club that just wants to get a European spot each year and celebrate that.
Mark C, Harrogate

…Is it likely that the wide range of views on whether Gareth Southgate has done a good job or not is really just a proxy for whether people agree with his stance on more political stuff? Things like his strong support for taking the knee?

Personally, I like the thoughtful way he speaks on issues but think it’s largely irrelevant to what goes on during games. So I don’t think he’s ‘holding back the best generation of players we’ve had’, that’s much too extreme.

Likewise, the ‘best/most successful manager since Alf Ramsey’ tag is equally one-eyed.

He’s fine, done some things well and some things badly. He’s done an average job. Average is fine though, especially when combined with the luck of the devil. Luck with the 2018 and 2021 draws has been well covered, as has essentially having a home tournament last year – especially in the Covid aftermath.

There’s been a few comparisons with the Sven era but what hasn’t been mentioned is luck with injuries.

Sven was cursed but Gareth has not had such problems, in fact it’s been his knock out opposition that has regularly missed key players. The upshot is we are back in our previous groove of, given equal luck, being a last 8 team. Getting through to this stage we do seem to beat the teams we ‘should’ with on average a little less fuss under Gareth, but then original qualification has been on average with a little more.

I noticed the F365 attempt at a pre-emptive strike last week, but in the last 8 we did lose to the first genuinely good team we played, in a game where we struggled to create from open play. Then talked about perceived ref injustices.

But Gareth, I guess that’s ok. That more or less happened the first time I remember England in a tournament in 1986. And, with slight variations on the theme, many times since.
Ronnie Buzzard, Manchester

Nice guys are awful, aren’t they?
So, football fans of England, many of you obviously have a massive problem with Gareth Southgate being “nice”. That opinion (on somebody none of you actually know) is regularly thrown out to support your proposition that he is useless at football management and has held England back from winning trophies. And by extension the English team has grown too “nice” to beat strong opposition. Which some of you apparently believe they “should”.

A few weeks ago there was a flurry of chat on this very site about the aggression and bullying which typifies so many English football people. That chat partly arose from assaults on officials at the amateur level of the game but also the general attitude or tone displayed by spectators at all levels.

So here’s my challenge to all you manly masculine types who know that “nice guys don’t win” and Gareth is the limp-waisted brake on English glory: HOW ARE YOU RAISING YOUR KIDS ?

Because if the answer is at all reflected in your views on football , I grieve for your children and their mental health. And for your friends and families too.
MIM (thankful for at least a few public figures who don’t embarrass the human race)

Where are the world-class players?
Kevin in the previous mail was worried that Southgate was wasting this ‘Golden Generation’, a la Martinez with Belgium. Where is this gold? The current England team have one world class player, Harry Kane. You could argue for the inclusion of Saka, Foden and Bellingham, but they aren’t at that level. Not yet!

Belgium, on the other hand, have had a squad filled with proven world class players: De Bruyne, Hazard, Courtois, Lukaku (his goalscoring record is world class), and, if we are talking of Martinez’s failings, we have to include Kompany. All are, or were, the very best in their position, i.e. world class.

The mere mention of England having a ‘Golden Generation’ at the moment simply demonstrates how great a job Southgate is doing with a fairly decent group of players. He has managed to blind some fans to think that the England team is better than it actually is. England got beat by a France team with Mbappe, Greizmann and Dembele supporting, an incredibly under-appreciated, Giroud. England were the better team on the night, but they aren’t on paper. That performance was because of Gareth Southgate, not in spite of him.

As Mr T. once said ‘I believe in the golden rule: the man with the gold.. rules!’. Give Southgate a few more years to really have a ‘Golden Generation’ to play with and then judge him as a failure or success. England are finally playing some good football, but don’t kid yourselves into thinking that anyone else could get more out of this rabble of talent.
Bagpuss
PS. Also, Dixon seems to think that Southgate doing as well as Sven is a bad thing. Sven’s England team was full of world class players. Try comparing these two teams side-by-side and see how many current players get in a comined first eleven.

Phase Kane out, England
The funny thing is this; Spurs fans that I know don’t want Kane playing so often for England, phase him out until he’s no longer playing please. Very few players can do what he does, this is something which is uniformly acknowledged by his peers but at 29 and with a few more years of PL football to play, why bother with internationals? Score another couple of goals for England, be the record scorer for your country, then do the same at Spurs.

He could go the Teddy Sheringham route quite easily. Join City (or Bayern – which I just don’t see happening) and fill the cabinet, then join Spurs again at 36, lose to Blackburn in the League Cup final then join New England Patriots and win the Superb Owl*.

But he’s going to put the disappointment of Saturday behind him by winning the CL and FA Cup – probably scoring winning penalties in both.

*granted Sheringham never went gridiron but Clive Allen became a London Monarch…
Dan Mallerman