I don’t believe for a second that England deserved the penalty—the tug of the shirt from Šimunić that brought Jermain Defoe so easily to ground was barely a flick, less than a gust of wind could do, certainly less than what passes without notice in nearly every football match—which means that as I saw it, this was a 3-1 game that could have been 4-1 or worse. In every way it was a harsher loss for England than the scoreline will indicate. They were abysmal, in the first half especially, and lost their place in Euro 2008 besides. It was a brutal match, and the best consolation that English players and fans can take from it is that as awful as their team looked, as naked in defense, as muddled in attack, they never grew resigned to the outcome. They played till the end like they thought they would manage to save it. They lacked organization tonight, not resolve. At times they seemed more confused by their own formation than Croatia was, but—oddly for a group of supposedly pampered superstars who are too soft to capitalize on their talent—they kept throwing themselves forward with a healthy desperate faith that the miracle would come. It was almost Scottish of them.
I thought before the match that the Wembley atmosphere and Croatia’s lack of motivation would ensure the win for England. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I don’t know whether the England supporters were beaten down by the rain or simply despondent about their team, but for much of the match they were drowned out by the otherworldly cheering of the few thousand Croatia fans. (They were never louder, in fact, than when they booed the team off at halftime.) As for Croatia, they played with both fluidity and sharpness, seemed shamelessly intent on winning, and executed almost to perfection a game plan that was flawlessly designed. I was impressed with Slaven Bilić’s coaching from beginning to end. His decision to play Olić up front rather than (as I had predicted) Petrić on the left payed double dividends: Olić continually alarmed the England defense in the first half, not only scoring the second goal but also forcing Scott Carson into the only decent saves he made all night. And Petrić came on as a fresh substitute just in time to score the third goal and put the seal on the match.
McClaren’s tactical gambits, by contrast, didn’t work quite so successfully. If he doesn’t resign tonight, I think he should be fired tomorrow, and I want to be very clear about the reason why. It isn’t that he tinkered with the tactics or that he out-thought himself; everything he tried, from the five-man midfield to the replacement of Robinson with Carson, was endorsed by countless experts (and a few non-experts, some of it) and based on reasonable assumptions. Not everything he tried seemed obviously like the right decision, but everything he tried was defensible. No, he deserves to be fired because each time he tinkered with his tactics, going back to the disastrous experiment with a 3-5-2 formation in Zagreb last October (another match where a draw would have sent England through)—every time he changed the players’ roles in any way, the result was disarray on the pitch and visible confusion within the team. Throughout the first half today, no one in a white shirt, with the sole exception of Crouch, seemed to understand what his role was or to know what he was supposed to do. That seems unambiguously to be a sign of poor coaching. If you can’t make the players understand the plan, then it doesn’t matter how good the plan is. We hear constantly that “England players like to play in the 4-4-2,” but Chelsea do sometimes alter their tactics without their English players running fecklessly into the advertising hoardings.
Tonight, watching from beneath the largest umbrella in human history, McClaren at least saw Beckham and Crouch play well together: that was another faint consolation for England. A fit Beckham can still contribute to this team, clearly more than can the disappointing Shaun Wright-Phillips, who seemed to enjoy about 40% of the possession singlehandedly in the first half, yet whose only important touch came when he forfeited a one-on-one opportunity in the eleventh minute and flung up a soft dead rabbit of a shot directly into the Croatia keeper’s arms. He holds the ball well, but sometimes seems to be holding it for the other team. That aside, the other point of hope for England is that they were desperately reduced by injury in this match, and with Beckham fit, Rooney and Owen healthy, and Terry, Cole, and Ferdinand back in defense, they might have forced a different outcome tonight. It’s no excuse for McClaren—even second-tier players can understand their roles, and his didn’t—but it’s something.
But this was a brutal match, brutal from the weather, brutal from the stress, brutal from the greasy slipperiness of the pitch. It was fascinating to watch, but felt like watching punishment, a feeling that I’m sure will be shared by every English football fan today. It’s hard to imagine Euro 2008 without England in it, and as much as I admire this Croatia team, the thought of not being able to see Rooney and Gerrard on a major stage next summer is deflating. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Croatia reach the quarterfinals, though it’s obviously early to speculate. For the rest of it, well, 2010 is less than three years away.
Read More: Croatia, England, Euro 2008, The Occasional Match Summary
by Brian Phillips · November 21, 2007
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England defeat was a shocker. i still cannot believe that England failed to qualify.
As I rambled about inadequately on Pitch Invasion, I’m interested by the fact that English players can play in different positions well for their clubs, but not for their countries. And this isn’t a new problem caused by McClaren, though he might not have solved it.
Is the connecting factor the obvious fact that when they play for England, they’re all playing with other English players?
That the technically adaptable players on Chelsea, Liverpool etc just happen to be the non-English ones?
That we can produce a lot of round pegs for particular holes, but few who can adapt to different positions as international football demands? (Due to the limited selection of players compared to the universe available to Chelsea).
I think that is pretty much exactly it.
Not only do players like Gerrard lack the tactical sense and range of abilities needed in order to provide the necessary flexibility, they have “grown up” in a system in which they are rarely (if ever) asked to even try to do so. Their one-dimensionality is celebrated, and foreign players are brought in to fill the other roles.
The fact that England’s most flexible player by at least an order of magnitude is a Canadian who learned his football in Germany is not a coincidence.
Tom & Ursus — I think we’d all agree on the solutions to the problem of England’s tactical rigidity—better youth development and a manager with a stronger tactical vision—but as a point of emphasis, I don’t entirely concur that the problem lies with the limitations of the current players. Too many of them are too good playing outside the 4-4-2 for their clubs for me to believe that they’re being saved every week by “versatile foreigners”. As far as playing out of position goes, they’re often not that bad at it (Gerrard can be very good as a right midfielder, even if he’s better in the middle), and they also seem prone to tactical confusion for England even when they’re in their best spots. On Wednesday night, for instance, the only player who was especially out of his comfort zone was Barry, and granted that he was anonymous, his being out of position can’t explain the fact that the rest of the team looked like marbles on a wobbly table.
The problem, I think, is not that individual English players can’t play outside the 4-4-2, but that they don’t know how to play outside the 4-4-2 with each other. And that, to my mind, is most likely a result of the tendency of recent England managers to rely on the same tactics until circumstances force them to make last-minute changes. They don’t seem to think of trying a 4-3-3 until their two best strikers are injured, and then they’re either too rushed or too uncertain to instill in their players any sense of how THIS 4-3-3 (as opposed to Chelsea’s or some other 4-3-3) is meant to function. Players who normally know their roles in a different formation (Joe Cole, say) don’t seem to know how they’re supposed to advance the ball or how the scheme is supposed to move when they play in that system for England. Then they switch back to the 4-4-2 at halftime, and because the players have practice working together in that system, they start to look a bit better.
Again, it’s just a point of emphasis, since the practical result in either case is that England fall to pieces under any degree of tactical inventiveness. But the distinction seems important to me because if the problem is largely managerial, it might be possible to find an effective near-term solution (a manager with a strong tactical vision) while the long-term improvements (a better youth system) take effect. If the problem is mostly the players, then it could be 10 years before a change of philosophy in the youth system begins to produce results. And I don’t know, maybe I’m an Anglophilic optimist, but it’s hard for me to believe that Mourinho couldn’t take this group of players and make them hum in a 4-3-3.
Perhaps it is too facile, but Jose would either have never started Gerrard and Lampard (I assume he would have picked Lampard), and started Hargreaves.
And if he had played Stevie G., he would have taken him off in the first half when it was clear that he had no clue of what he should be doing.
It was interesting to watch Gerrard against Newcastle this afternoon; he was the usual glory-hunting headless chicken in the first half, but once he had gotten his “A Special Moment from Gerrard!!!” goal, he seemed to realise that he could in fact see other players on the pitch and play telling passes.
If you have a chance, see what how he sets up Babel’s goal, and he created multiple similar chances for Torres (who wasted them all).
I could really care less about England (I’m am American living in Italy who supports Holland), but I would take Mr. Hat over the Special One, if only because I think Jose would get bored, and that it would be difficult to introduce a manager who has such a personal relationship with a number of national team players (more due to the reaction of the “other BRC” contingent than his own, I admit, I trust Mourinho to look at things professionally were he to take the job).
I’ve already said it, but it bears repeating that you are doing a great job here. Thanks for sharing your insights with the rest of us.
Ursus — Thanks for the kind words. I couldn’t agree more about Mourinho growing bored if he were to coach England—he really seems too restless for the slow pace of the international schedule. And he’s so young that he could conceivably do ten or twelve more years at club level and still have time for a long international career. So he wouldn’t be my first choice for England either. That said, a bored Mourinho is still a better coach than an actively engaged and heavily caffeinated McClaren.
Off topic, I saw the Liverpool-Newcastle match today and I agree that Gerrard settled down after his Magical Moment(TM). I thought the slightly disgraceful booing he received from the Newcastle fans might have had something to do with his play before he scored. Either way, it was a beautiful goal. For the record, Liverpool are on a 13-0 scoring run since I published my “What’s the Matter with Liverpool?” feature earlier this month. Thanks for making me look good, Liverpool.