MAKING A POINT
The debate that used to dominate the hot England narrative was always about whether midfield tyros Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard could work together in the centre of the park. The answer was generally “no” but it still got England to the quarter finals in most tournaments. Thankfully – a difficult word to say, just ask Stephen Warnock – things have moved on and the big question is: can 11 Englishman be on the same pitch without looking completely disjointed and confused?
Plucky England managed to secure a point against Denmark thanks to Harry Kane scoring relatively early before the trademark 70-minute lull in performance, when everyone in white forgot they actually play for good clubs and win trophies, instead wandering around aimlessly like a two-year-old on an Easter egg hunt. No one bothered to close down Morten Hjulmand after he was given the ball through an errant pass, allowing him to ping one into the corner. England managed to hold on to keep themselves top of the group.
Kane, Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka and – whisper it – Jude Bellingham were completely ineffective against the Danes. None seemed to have much of an inkling what the other was trying to do. Dear old Gareth Southgate thought things were so bad he withdrew his front three, sending on players from Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and West Ham. That’s how bad things were. Kane scored 44 goals for Bayern Munich this season, Foden was named PFA Player of the Year thanks to a wondrous season at Manchester City, Saka led Arsenal’s title challenge and Bellingham was integral as Real Madrid won La Liga and the Big Cup, but for England they look like a tired McFly tribute act.
“I think we’re struggling both with and without the ball,” chirped Kane afterwards, a grim description of the incompetence being forced upon a confused nation. Southgate moaned: “We do not have a natural replacement for Kalvin Phillips.” The fact Phillips has barely played for two years might have implied this problem was going to come. They do have Kobbie Mainoo and Adam Wharton, who actually play in the same position, but instead the manager has played a right-back there. Maybe Trent Alexander-Arnold needs to get on the blower to Kal to ask what makes him such a great player. The good news is that, if they beat Slovenia comfortably on Tuesday and get through to the knockout stages, most of this will be forgotten. But if the performances get worse, the Tory election campaign manager may end up feeling glum about another example of failing conservatism.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Will Unwin for Slovakia 1-2 Ukraine (2pm BST), then follow Poland 1-2 Austria with Barry Glendenning (5pm) before Netherlands 1-2 France with Luke McLaughlin (8pm) as the Euros continue without mercy.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Maybe I needed to give them more rest. Probably more days off because we gave them a day and a half [off] and thought that was the right decision after looking at the GPS data, but there was too much of a gulf. We were constantly stretched and never able to squeeze the gaps” – Italy boss Luciano Spalletti blames himself for overworking his players before the 1-0 defeat by Spain and gets us wondering just how far he had them running if they were being measured by a global positioning tracker.
EURO 2024 DAILY LETTERS
Despite England’s latest pitiful performance, it’s good to see that Big Website’s Countdown winning (on eight consecutive occasions, no less) football writer Jonathan Liew managed to entertain himself by writing a paragraph of his match report without using the letter ‘a’. As it happens, at the same time, I was also so bored out of my mind that I also tried writing about England but without using the letter ‘c’, although sadly I couldn’t get beyond the first line” – Noble Francis.
Watching Slovenia I noticed they have mountains on the shirts as they are quite an alpine nation. Not enough geographical features on shirts in my humble opinion. Maybe England could follow and put rivers full of [beep – Euro 2024 Bad Words Daily Ed) on their shirts?” – Antony Train.
Are you sure Ossie Ardiles (Thursday’s Quote of the Day) wasn’t confused and was actually at, well, any game England has played of late” – Paul Arnold.
Does Gary Neville going to Berlin to act as a pundit for the Euros qualify as one of his mini-retirements?” – Martyn Shapter.
The only thing better than the Swiss fan getting hit in the mush during the Scotland game [Thursday’s letters] is the same clip, with the ‘boing’ bit of the Grandstand theme added” – Jim Hearson.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Jim Hearson, who wins a copy of Euro 84: The Greatest Tournament You Never Saw, by Pitch Publishing. Visit their bookshop here. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
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A MESSAGE FROM THE MAN
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