On... Euro 2024 #3: England Are England, After All
24 Years Later Everything Has Changed but England's Eternal Flaws Remains
I’ve cried on ashen floors of working men's clubs
'96, '98, 2000, 2002, 2004
Oh my God, will it end?
Oh my God, Oh my God!
Los Campesinos!, “Miserbellia”
Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash
If historic recurrence exists within the reality of the everyday, rather than just behind the gilded gates of academia, it is very rarely a good thing. As Dutch historian Rutger Bregman opened his book Utopia for Realists, “Let’s start with a history lesson; in the past everything was worse.”
Charleroi, a city in Belgium, is, as the Google Maps crow flies, roughly 134 miles from Cologne. This fact, which I’m not even sure qualifies as fun, should engender a sense of foreboding as England prepare to face Slovenia in their final group game on Tuesday. That is the distance between the stadium England play in tomorrow and the one in which they lost 3-2 to Romania, the last time they exited the European Championships at the group stage.
Like the endless repetition of a Mark E. Smith song, only terrible, there are some stark similarities between these two events. On both occasions, England needed a draw to progress, they had four or five world-class players in attacking positions, were a tactically flawed team, and the pressure of tournament football was seemingly going to crumble them.
In an act of self-inflicted masochism that outstrips anything the Marquis himself engaged in, this weekend saw me rewatching that Romania match. I did so not because I am single1 and my friends always seem to have “other plans,”2 but because England are hitting the same plot beats with remarkable precision. This is the third act of every Marvel film, the life expectancy of a gazelle if there’s an Attenborough voiceover as they stand idly grazing, the uncomfortable glances that follow when Prince Andrew mentions he’s going on holiday.
The game is remembered chiefly for its ending: a last-minute penalty given away by Phil Neville, from which Ionel Ganea scored and England crashed out. Although, “crashing out” is perhaps a phrase used with more than a hint of exceptionalism given that England had yet to win a Euros knockout game in 90 minutes at this point.
I had forgotten much of England’s line-up, and it was shocking, even by England’s standards, how dysfunctional it was. They lined up—hold your breath!—in a very rigid 4-4-2, with a midfield that contained three central midfielders and a right-winger who always wanted to be a CM. Dennis Wise was playing as a left-winger. Dennis Wise. I didn’t even know he had an England cap. He was not remotely qualified to play this position; no left foot, little pace, a natural conservatism that hindered his ability to make penetrating runs.3
Beckham, while a fantastic player who spent most of his career as a right-sided midfielder, was never a touchline hugger. He could certainly do that, but watching this game back, you see that he often occupied a false 8 position: five yards inside, around 35 yards out, an (almost) proto Kevin de Bruyne. With Wise consistently coming inside, England had no width, a clogged central area with no dynamic passing lanes, and thus was reduced to long balls over the top.
Sound familiar? Against Denmark, any play that went through England’s auxiliary left-back, Keiran Trippier, suffered from the same problems. There was no attempt to provide width; every time he got the ball, he came inside looking to pass into an England midfield so disordered and so far apart from each other that they resembled ghosts haunting their own individual moors.
Against Romania, as against Denmark, as with pretty much every England performance under pressure, the subconscious screams of retreat retreat retreat seem to consume the players. This tactical choice creates something almost uniquely English: football that is both conservative and reckless. The team shrinks in itself, with no will or ability to play forward as a cohesive unit, yet they are so structurally disorganised they leave spaces in the pitch so large you could build student flats there.
There are clear differences between these two England teams. Gareth Southgate has managed to forge, from the gruesome sludge of Icelandic ashes mixed with Allardyce Chardonnie, a successful England team. He has tactically improved a national footballing culture more in the last eight years than anyone in the previous fifty. But England find themselves facing criticisms dating back to the 1950s: a failure to keep the ball in midfield combined with an instinctive territorial concession when winning.
Inevitability can be an overwhelming emotion. It can devour a team because if you are fighting against it, you are really fighting against history, and history hangs heavy on all of us. On Tuesday, history will not repeat itself in the same way for England; even if they lose, the chances of not qualifying are very slim. This is a better England team, with a manager that has drastically improved English football compared to its 2000 counterpart. Yet the inevitability that stalked that game against Romania is encircling Kane & Co. in 2024. But with all this potential, all the amelioration of past deficiencies, this recurrence might hurt all the more.
Although, I am, so ladies if you are reading…
Passive aggressive shots fired!
Dennis Wise. Fuck me.