Friday, June 29, 2018

It Must Be Hell Being an England Fan

On Sunday, the heights of euphoria - a magnificant win over Panama. 6-1! The greatest thing ever! Clearly, England are going to win the World Cup! It's coming home! And all that nonsense.

Except... Panama are really a team that England should be beating, and beating handsomely. Yes, 6-1 is a great result, and yes it was a good performance, but still... There aren't really any indications to be read here. As you were.

Today, the depths of despair - a defeat to Belgium meaning they only came second in their group. Disaster! They'll be going out in the next round. Woe! Woe!

But, again... it was obvious from last night's match that England really weren't trying very hard. Rightly or wrongly, Southgate was clearly convinced that it was better to lose that match, take the slightly-tougher match against Colombia (rather than Japan) but then have the benefit of avoiding the possibility of Brazil before the final, and so forth.

Now, it's entirely reasonable to question the wisdom of that approach. After all, Colombia aren't a team to take lightly, so there's certainly a risk of it all backfiring.

But the thing is: that was the decision that he'd obviously made - better to lose that match and take his chances.

So, again, that game really can't be taken as any indication of how they're going to do in the future matches. The result means nothing, since it's what they played for. The performance means nothing, because they weren't trying particularly hard.

Seriously, it's the most ridiculous hyperbole about Sunday's triumph and Thursday's disaster... ignoring the fact that actually England are yet to really meet with either of them. Tuesday's match against Colombia will be the first time we actually see how well they can do when really tested.

No comments: