Is England’s Euro 2020 Squad Unbalanced?
This weekend, football’s European Championships will kick off after a year’s delay. The Euro 2020 tournament was postponed last year because of the difficulties posed by the global pandemic. The tournament’s name hasn’t been changed – presumably because of pre-existing marketing agreements – but it’s happening in the summer of 2021, and it will be the biggest event in world football since the World Cup of 2018. Many of the world’s greatest players will be there, but only one squad will be celebrating by the end of the final game. Most people expect that team to be France. There are other countries in with a chance, though, and one of them is England.
It’s been fifty-five years since England last won a major international tournament. That was the World Cup of 1966, which the country also hosted. They came close to winning Euro 96, which was also hosted in England, and surprised everybody by reaching the semi-final stages of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Euro 2020 doesn’t have a single host nation, but the semi-finals and final of the tournament will be played at Wembley Stadium in London. With the home advantage, this might be England’s best chance at winning a trophy in a generation – but has manager Gareth Southgate picked the right squad?
Common sense might tell you that the best way to pick a football team is to choose the best eleven players available to you. In practice, it’s not that easy. The individual talents of a specific player can be blunted if they don’t gel well with their teammates. Assembling a winning team is almost like trying to land on a winning line at an online slots website. It takes patience and experimentation – and the solution often isn’t obvious until you land on it by accident. Persistence and patience are often the keys to victory with online slots, but Southgate doesn’t have the luxury of being able to spin again in the same way online slots players do. If you don’t like your outcomes at Rose Slots Canada, you can pay to spin again and get a new one. Southgate and his players don’t have the luxury of trial and error. Everything has to be right from the word ‘go,’ and he has to find the right combination from his selected squad of 26 players. The big question is whether he’s chosen the right 26.
When Southgate trimmed his initial pool of 33 players down to 26 in preparation for the tournament, he made the seemingly bizarre decision to choose four right-backs. Reece James of Chelsea, Kyle Walker of Manchester City, Kieran Trippier of Atletico Madrid and Trent Alexander-Arnold of Liverpool all made the cut. Unless he planned on playing one of those players out of position – a strange thing to do at a high-profile tournament – it looked like far too much cover for just one position in the starting eleven. Walker can be played as a centre-back rather than a right-back, but he wouldn’t be the first choice in that role. The decision to load the position so heavily was criticised, but Southgate has the opportunity to correct the balance when Alexander-Arnold was forced to pull out because of injury. He didn’t do so.
When the Liverpool player withdrew, there was hope among the press that Southampton’s creative midfielder James Ward-Prowse would be called up in his absence. Failing that, there could have been a reprieve for Jesse Lingard, who’s shown such fabulous form for West Ham on loan from Manchester United. Southgate even took the unusual step of naming Lingard in his starting eleven for the friendly against Austria even though Lingard had already been cut from the final squad. If there’s a hole anywhere in England’s squad for the Euros, it’s in midfield. Only six recognised midfielders have been selected – a fact that’s certain to be a worry in the event of injuries or suspensions. It wasn’t to be. Southgate recalled Burnley’s Ben White instead, bringing the number of right-backs in the squad back up to four.
There must be a method to Southgate’s apparent madness. He works with the players every day in training, and he’s in the role because he’s trusted to make tough calls. He might be planning to spring a tactical surprise. Both James and Trippier are competent going forward as well as tidying things up at the back, so he may be planning to play with wing-backs as well as traditional right-backs and left-backs to make England stronger on the counterattack. The problem with such a plan is that most pundits don’t believe counterattacking to be the best way for England to win games.
England is fortunate enough to have some of the best attacking players in the world. Harry Kane – who remains with Tottenham Hotspur for now but might not be there by the end of the summer – is arguably the world’s best traditional striker. Marcus Rashford and Dominic Calvert-Lewin are there to play supporting roles. Just behind them ought to be some combination of Phil Foden, Jack Grealish, Jadon Sancho, Raheem Sterling, and Mason Mount. Declan Rice, Jordan Henderson, or Kalvin Phillips would handle defensive midfield duties in the ideal starting eleven for most people.
What happens behind them is less certain. The England team doesn’t have an established first-choice goalkeeper. Jordan Pickford’s form at Everton has been a concern, Nick Pope is out injured, and Dean Henderson has been in and out of the Manchester United team all season. Manchester United captain Harry Maguire has made high-profile mistakes this season and yet is still England’s best centre-back. His partner is likely to be Manchester City’s John Stones, who’s developed an unfortunate habit of making nervous errors in big games. Playing out from the back isn’t where England’s strength lies. From the players available, it would make more sense to play all-out attacking football and rely on scoring more goals than the team’s opponents.
All of this will soon be conjecture. People had low expectations of England when they started World Cup 2018, and Southgate proved them all wrong. He may do so again. If he doesn’t, though, the press will ask very hard questions about the decisions he made before the tournament began. If Southgate is unable to answer them, he might soon be looking for a new job.
