There was a familiar feeling for England supporters upon going to bed on Thursday night. Once again, genuine hopes of tangible achievement were taken from them by naivety and moments of madness from players who ought to know better. The match-winning moments for the Netherlands in the UEFA Nations League semi-final came from two errors by John Stones near his own goal. The Manchester City man paid a heavy price for firstly delaying on the ball to allow Memphis Depay to dispossess him for the goal to make it 2-1 and then his hospital pass to Ross Barkley put the Chelsea man in an awkward position as the Dutch again took full advantage. As Stones looks to recover from the error of his ways in Manchester City’s pre-season, you’ll be able to livestream football matches here from July.
Gareth Southgate has been praised enormously by fans and media alike over the last year, but his preference for playing out from the back came in for voluble criticism after the defeat in Guimaraes. Although the dangers of this approach are obvious, the England manager deserves plenty of credit for having the conviction to go with it. After all, fans of the Three Lions have long lamented the lack of finesse and technical refinement from their national team.
As is often the case nowadays, fans and media tend to view everything to extremes through the prism of one result. The same people who were chastising Southgate over player errors last night had for months been lauding him for getting England to play a more fluid brand of football. It’s not as if he could be held liable for Stones, a two-time Premier League winner, being so sloppy and lackadaisical on the ball. Also, the team’s results in tournaments since he took the job in comparison to what went before justify his preference for playing out from the back.
It isn’t just at the national team level that England’s players have thrived, either. Over the course of the season just finished, the likes of Harry Maguire and Jordan Henderson have carried their World Cup form into club level, to the benefit of those individual players as well as their teams. Maguire has looked a composed, assured presence at the heart of the Leicester defence under Brendan Rodgers, a man who also favours a possession-based tactical mindset.
Henderson, who not long ago was derided as an ineffective luxury at Liverpool, has grown into a quietly inspirational captain whose pinpoint passing has been central to the Reds’ Champions League success and Premier League title charge. In 54 matches for club and country over the past year, he has averaged 51.5 passes per game, with an accuracy average of 85.5%. These figures rise to 54.4 passes per game with an 87.2% success rate for Premier League matches.
The success of Southgate’s patient gameplan, while yet to translate into a trophy, is one that could well be copied at schoolboy clubs and professional academies throughout England. Many Premier League academy coaches will surely have recognised the merits of playing out from the back and drill this into young players, who will be adept at the practice by the time they make it to first team level. This will lead to better-skilled players improving the quality of the Premier League and enabling England to thrive.
Southgate’s mantra of playing out from the back might be coming in for criticism today, but it has paid dividends for England in previous games and will continue to benefit the national team.
