OA pass was all that was needed. Eleven minutes into England’s 2-0 win over Ireland on Saturday, Trent Alexander-Arnold picked up the ball about 15 yards outside his own penalty area. He spotted Anthony Gordon making a run in behind the Irish defence from the left and drilled a perfectly weighted pass 60 yards out. Although Gordon was blocked by Ireland goalkeeper Caoimhín Kelleher, and Harry Kane had an effort blocked as the ball was brought back into the middle, Declan Rice smashed home the loose ball to give England a 1-0 lead.
Instantly, social media went up in flames. This was what England had missed. This was what could have happened if Gareth Southgate hadn’t been so obsessed with picking Kyle Walker. This was what happened when you let off the handbrake. Fifteen minutes later, a rat-a-tat of passes through the Irish defence led to Jack Grealish, who was not in the England squad for the Euros, who slotted home a fine second. Again the shouting, less in support of England’s interim manager Lee Carsley than of Southgate, his predecessor.
There were undoubtedly some promising aspects of Saturday’s victory for England. Alexander-Arnold is arguably England’s best passer of the ball and Carsley found a way to accommodate him. The use of Levi Colwill, more naturally a centre-back, on the left of the back four meant that when Alexander-Arnold pushed forward, the rest of the defence effectively formed a back three, providing solidity.
Gordon, who was used for just six minutes at the Euros, was a constant threat who ran past Kane. Carsley had previously gotten the best out of the Newcastle man, using him as a mobile striker when England Under-21s won their European Championship last year. One of the problems the England senior team has had in recent times has been the lack of a player who could run past Kane, meaning that when he dropped deep, one of the great strengths of his game, one of the qualities that makes him unusual for such a prolific goalscorer, it meant England lost a significant goal threat.
That’s all good. Football isn’t about a blueprint or a template. There’s no one right way to play; if individual quirks and idiosyncrasies can be worked through, a team becomes less predictable and therefore harder to play against. If Alexander-Arnold can become for his country what he is for Liverpool, a playmaking right-back, and Gordon can provide England with a threat in behind the opposition defence – and the two seemed to mesh well together – then that’s all good.
But to think that the success of the two policies in the first half hour on Saturday means that Southgate should have been ousted earlier is as foolish as believing that Carsley is unfit for the England job because he won’t sing the national anthem. (In the same way that Southgate gave Steve Holland tactical insight, could Carsley bring Emeli Sandé into his coaching staff to sing the anthem?) Instead of Alexander-Arnold and Gordon, Southgate selected Walker and Phil Foden, the Manchester City right-back and left-winger who have won the Premier League in six of the last seven seasons, at the European Championship. The omission of Alexander-Arnold and Gordon was no eccentric quirk on Southgate’s part.
If fully fit, Walker could return; he is a fine right-back whose pace has regularly kept England out of trouble. Foden has not had the best of European Championships, but he was probably England’s best player in the first half of their semi-final win over the Netherlands, a period in which they played their best game. Gordon, it might be noted, was terrible in the final warm-up match when England lost to Iceland. Jude Bellingham will provide a further complication when he returns from injury. For a manager, this is the curse of England’s strength in depth: there will always be a long list of players who could have played, who in defeat become players who should have played.
Beating mid-table teams like Ireland hasn’t been England’s problem of late, to be honest; it’s the elite that keep beating them. That’s a problem Mauricio Pochettino will face if and when he takes charge of the USMNT: playing the likes of New Zealand and Panama is all well and good, but it’s not necessarily great preparation for taking on, say, the Netherlands or Belgium at a World Cup. Just as he’s looking for balance, there will always be critics ready to pounce at the first slip-up because their favourite has been left out.
Ireland’s Icelandic manager Heimir Hallgrímsson (who, for those keeping track, did not sing the Irish national anthem) fired his team up in the second half, not only making Alexander-Arnold and Gordon less effective, but also raising further doubts about the Rice-Kobbie Mainoo duo at the back of midfield. That’s something that still needs some work, with Lille’s Angel Gomes, who came on with 13 minutes to go, an intriguing potential solution.
The nature of international football is that, because there is less of it, every game is overexposed, but there are few silver bullets. One player, or one adjustment, is very rarely the answer, and so managers have to be good at blocking out the noise and staying true to their vision. And as Carsley has discovered in recent days, the noise often has very little to do with football.
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This is an excerpt from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, the Guardian US’s weekly look at the game in Europe and beyond. Register here for free. Got a question for Jonathan? Email him at soccerwithjw@theguardian.com and he’ll feature the best answer in a future edition