As Spurs, Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea and maybe a couple of others prepare to welcome home World Cup winners, runner's up and 3rd and 4th place medallists, it's time to really examine England's most successful world cup since 1990.
Except, without wishing to appear like I'm jumping on a negative bandwagon, I do think in the euphoria of a semi-final appearance, it's prevalent to examine some of the things that obviously do not make Gareth Southgate a winner, just yet.
Jordan Pickford stands out as one of the outstanding goalkeepers of the tournament; he had one or two moments, but he's young and he was fearless. He was let down by areas that he would not have been let down by with a different defence.
The Defence: Against Tunisia and Panama playing Kyle Walker - arguably the country's finest right wing back and one of the best in the world - as a centre back, when there were two perfectly excellent centre backs on the bench was excusable, but once the opposition started to be more wily, surely that was the time to stiffen it up? Except, England had Kieran Trippier in the right wing back position and he was arguably England's player of the tournament. It seems that Southgate's version of getting Scholes, Lampard and Gerrard in the same team is how to play the two best English right backs in the same team and make the surplus-to-requirements Liverpool teenager feel as though he's there for more than a holiday with his bigger mates?
The problem is, who do you drop? One is lightning fast and the other is one of the best crossers of a ball since Beckham. The problem is, Walker isn't a world class centre back by any stretch of the imagination. France arguably left an entire team of quality players at home (and still took Giroud), maybe part of being an England manager is having to make decisions that mean someone misses out?
John Stones was solid and dependable; I have no complaints about his inclusion and I'd also suggest that Harry Maguire had a tournament to remember and one that will only increase his value. The problem is that I'd also have to say that Ashley Young had a good tournament; he didn't particularly do anything wrong and having an older head on the pitch was a good thing; but we missed the natural left foot and speed of Danny Rose, who never made the impact coming on as sub as he can when he grows into a game naturally from the start.
Eric Dier is as good a centre back as he's a defensive midfielder (he can also play right back) and he's a better ball player (and defender) than Walker. He could also have been used in a revolving back 4/back 5 scenario. Walker and Trippier could have played as alternating wingers.
I also could not understand why Fabian Delph was taken and used in a position he would never play for Man City in. Delph has become a good converted wing back, like Victor Moses at Chelsea and Young at Man U, but he's picked, and played in his old position because there's an embarrassment of riches in the wing back department.
The Midfield: I wasn't the only person mystified by the inclusion of Delph as a central midfielder, but considering England took a grand total of 7 footballers who can, have and do play in right back positions for their clubs, I would have thought that a couple more midfielders wouldn't have gone amiss. I'm no fan of Jack Wilshere but I think he's a much better player than Fabian Delph and Jonjo Shelvey would have provided freakish distraction allowing Harry Kane to score even more goals. The thing is for an England football team to be light of a midfield is not a positive sign, especially when there appears to be few on the horizon, excepting the injured players, of course (but would the relatively inexperienced Harry Winks be ahead of someone like Ruben Loftus-Cheek?).
Jordan Henderson actually had a reasonably good tournament. He was better than I expected or even believed he could be, I simply don't think he offers England anything other than workmanlike from midfield. He tries hard, but so, as some people say, do fat girls. The same can pretty much be said of Jesse Lingard, who, despite excellent moments, never seems to achieve what you expect of him when you need it. Ruben Loftus-Cheek replaced Dele Alli for a couple of games and did okay, but it wasn't until he returned and scored that the Spurs man started to look up for the cup, but surely RL-C could have done Lingard's role, the way Dier could do Henderson's? Simply put, our midfield should have been more prominent. One of our tactics in the Croatia game seemed to be the back five passed it around a bit, played it back to Pickford who launched it up field - shades of Graham Taylor.
I believe Dele Alli plays well in central midfield, when he has his usual crowd around him; he's far more creative in a Spurs shirt than he was for England; the problem is - and this isn't bias - he's best as a #10 styled player and better in that position than both Sterling or Lingard.
The Forwards: Harry Kane didn't look fit. He hasn't looked fit since his injury back at the end of March. He's a player England have to play, but preferably when he's fit and up for it, not just the latter. Raheem Sterling does lots, sadly there's very little return in this team because they're not Man City. Sterling plays a specific way and doesn't read the game well, he's just tenacious enough to get consolation prizes for his greedy tendencies. Marcos Rashford displayed both naivety, nerves and flashes of brilliance; he warranted being on the field longer than Sterling. Vardy looked like he was at the beach. Welbeck might have well been - we could have brought at least another midfielder, even if it was just 'a potential' like Trent Alexander-Double-Barrelled-Liverpudlian-Lad?
England's Competition: Tunisia hit us back at the right time because that game was fizzling out and England needed a wake-up call. Panama could have happened to anyone half decent and Belgium was an almost pointless B-team game (as it will be on Saturday). By the time extra time arrived in the Last 16 match against Colombia, it was obvious that they had started to suss out our one routine from set pieces; the fact Sweden also sussed it but failed to do anything about it glossed over some glaring cracks hidden by how fortuitous we'd been with the draw. In the semi, Croatia really struggled with our set-pieces in the first half, but pretty much weathered the storm; by the time they'd collected themselves for the second half they dealt with set plays easily and started to play it around with some belief. Instead of being tired, they were fired up by their equaliser and anyone with half a footballing brain saw the best hope England had from that point on was actually penalties.
Southgate pretty much kept the same line-up, the same Plan A, throughout the entire World Cup. Look at a maligned manager, Roberto Martinez of Belgium; he changed things around against Brazil and Belgium breezed through that match with little to worry about. Belgium might not have beaten France in the other semi-final, but Martinez was at least shifting things around. My only criticism of Martinez was he didn't rotate his excellent squad enough and appeared to play some of his clearly less capable players at times - but what do I know? Some of those unfancied footballers won games for him!
When you look at how England got to the semis - Tunisia, Panama, Colombia and Sweden - you would be excused from believing it wasn't exactly hard (Albeit the performance against Sweden was largely excellent). Croatia - many positions lower than England is the laughable FIFA rankings - had experience and a couple of world class footballers and pretty much offered the young English lads their only real test. They reminded me so much of Spurs versus Juventus in last season's Champions League; the better team failed to capitalise and were then suckered and had no reply.
In general, this world cup was as full of surprises as the last European Championships. The early loss of Germany, Argentina and Spain opened it up and some teams performed considerably better than they should ever have been allowed to. No one is suggesting the competition was fixed, but Russia's penalty shoot-out defeat in the quarter-finals was possibly the most justified result in the entire competition. Russia should never have been given the cup; like Qatar in four years, this does nothing for the world game and loads to help line the pockets of oligarchs and sheikhs as well as shining a grubby spotlight on human rights abuses, which, of course, FIFA are blissfully ignorant of on an industrial scale.
The world cup is a bloated and unnecessarily large competition that stirs up unwanted jingoism from English twats (and others). It impinges on the far more important domestic football seasons and makes people think they're seeing stunning matches and a celebration of football; when in reality we'll lap up anything in a hot summer with no club football and Wimbledon. Equally, the same could be said for the European Champions League - which should be for Champions only and not an invitation for rich clubs to make more money (and that includes the exclusive club my own team is now entering). The World Cup should be smaller, maybe with just 16 nations, if this means the same 16 nations almost every four years, then FIFA needs to invest more of its banked billions on developing nations, on bigger youth tournaments (which allows these young talents more of a platform than academy or B team football), on ensuring smaller leagues are not only supported but encouraged to develop players from every country that wants to play football.
That isn't going to happen. I might as well argue with a brick wall because England got to a world cup semi-final! Just be thankful they didn't get through to the final or even win it.
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