England bow out of World Cup- but the future remains bright
Defeat against France was hard to swallow, but attention needs to quickly turn to Euro 2024
Tournament football and England Men’s team have had a painful relationship for many, many years. Under Gareth Southgate, this has continued but has perhaps been made even more painful by the fact we’ve been given much more hope.
The agonising defeat to France brought to an end a World Cup campaign which threatened to end in a far more successful way for England. We came up against the defending World Champions and simply were not clinical enough.
Some key moments of the game were things that you never anticipate happening. The main stand out one of these being Harry Kane failing to hit the target from the penalty spot. Despite scoring from 12 yards earlier in the match, the Tottenham strike couldn’t make it two from two.
It was a kick in the teeth, for I don’t think we did a lot wrong at all. We played some good football and plenty of the players stood up to be counted- Jordan Henderson and Jude Bellingham to name but two.
France scored two very good goals, the second coming from one of many great crosses Antoine Griezmann put into the box throughout the night. The first, if you want to be critical, could have been prevented had Aurélien Tchouaméni been closed down quicker.
A lot of talk since full time was over whether or not Gareth Southgate would take England forward. There are plenty of good points on both sides. Southgate has been criticised in the past for sometimes playing to not lose rather than to win. His substitutions raised more than a few eyebrows and delays to making any changes at all arguably blunted any attacking intent we set out to implement in the dying embers of the match.
If that was Gareth Southgate’s last tournament match in charge, then he leaves us with the grounding of what could be a truly golden age. The squad he has put together is exciting and fearless, but it feels as though he needs to transfer the reins of the project over to a new face now.
Southgate took over as England boss following a run of woeful tournament performances. Following on from group stage elimination at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, we fell at the last 16 stage of Euro 2016 to Iceland. The national team was a mess following what was a dreadful performance, and a rebuild was needed.
Gareth Southgate did this, and in three major tournaments we’ve qualified convincingly to each and finished up with a quarter final, semi-final and final under our belts. You can argue that a more attack-minded manager might have changed these almost moments into a major tournament win, but what Southgate has brought in terms of the memories is the best I’ve ever known watching England.
The group of players who represent England are some of the most exciting I’ve ever known. But in addition to this, they are also the most likeable. For too long, we had players who had more arrogance than ability, and tournament results reflected this.
Qualifying for Euro 2024 gets underway in March and whoever is in charge for the opening game away at Italy will know that they have a group of players who will mostly be hitting their prime within the next three to four years.
The Southgate years have been a case of creating incredible memories but ultimately falling just short. The pieces are there for England to finally end what will now be at least 58 years of pain on the international stage, it’s up to the hierarchy to make sure this golden generation of talent doesn’t go to waste.
