Football: England’s “deathly” World Cup qualification

The England football team “must be doing something right”, said Daniel Taylor in The Guardian. By defeating Slovenia 1-0 last week, they qualified for next summer’s World Cup with a game to spare. Sunday’s 1-0 win over Lithuania ensured that they finished their campaign with eight wins and two draws from ten matches; they have now reached four successive major tournaments in a row without losing a single qualifier. Yet for all that, qualifying hardly felt like cause for celebration. In the “joyless” match against Slovenia, England were so stodgy that the spectators at Wembley had to resort to “creating their own entertainment”, by launching paper planes.

You’d have to go back to the 2006 World Cup to find a tournament when the national side generated optimism, said Barney Ronay in the same paper. This time, “England does not expect”. Yet even by their recent standards, “this has been a deathly qualification”, with just 16 goals. England have always been at their best playing “swift, sharp, counter-attacking football”, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. But since Gareth Southgate took over as manager last year, he has “sucked out of the squad whatever small vestiges of creativity, excitement and verve still remained”. Southgate’s real problem is the dearth of talent in the side, said Graeme Souness in the same paper. This is “the most modest group” of England players in decades. Nowhere is that more clear than in central midfield, where the side has no “creative force”. Instead, they must make do with Eric Dier and Jordan Henderson – “workmanlike” Premier League players who lack “the technique to deliver incisive passes”.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, said Henry Winter in The Times. England boast at least one world-class player: Harry Kane, who has scored 15 goals in his last ten matches for club and country. “England’s leading light in every sense,” he found the net against both Slovenia and Lithuania. There are other glimmers of hope: Kane’s Tottenham teammate Dele Alli, and Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford. And with eight months to go before the World Cup starts, Southgate still has time to salve “England’s woes”, said Dominic Fifield in The Guardian. Liverpool’s Adam Lallana will soon return from injury, bringing his “movement and frontfoot urgency” to central midfield. To really turn the team around, however, Southgate should take a leaf out of Iceland’s book. The tiny country did so well at Euro 2016, where they reached the quarter-finals, because they managed to “implement a relatively simple game plan”. England are never going to play like Spain; but if they go into the World Cup with “a clear and distinct” approach, they might just confound their supporters’ pessimism.