Thomas Tuchel said he wanted to give his England team more “clarity”, and there is little as obvious in football as whipping a cross into the box. Such deliveries were for decades the staple of the English game, the articles of faith in the classic 4-4-2, something all the more resonant given that the manager has talked about restoring core values. Meat and potatoes. Get into the mixer. Get the job done.
They were enough here for a 2-0 win over Andorra, as both goals came from deliveries down the right.
As to whether they’re going to be as effective in the heat of America – and white heat of a World Cup knock-out – that isn’t actually so relevant right now. Tuchel spoke before the game that England had to go about developing different game models within their overall approach, and one of those he is most concerned about is for matches against teams with 5-4-1 low blocks.
The manager cautioned before the match that qualification is far from confirmed, after all. Tuesday’s away match in Serbia may well define and decide the entire campaign. But, around it, England are going to face a lot of games like this.
And, as absurd as it sounds given the historic perceptions of their limitations, few are as well versed in this approach as Andorra. They are not the pushovers they once were. You have to go back four years to the last time they even lost by five goals in a qualifier, and that was to England. In between, they have only conceded an average of just over two goals a qualifier, and conceded four just twice.
This isn’t to make excuses for a broadly underwhelming qualifier, as we still wait for any kind of ignition from Tuchel’s England. It is now getting a little close to the World Cup to be proceeding without any kind of lift, but his team are at least doing the basics.
They’ve won every qualifier so far. They’ve managed that in a broadly reductive manner. Elliot Anderson was tidy in the middle. Noni Madueke was lively. Eberechi Eze might just feel he missed that goal, in a controlled display. That might also describe the game. And yet there might be a deeper significance to all of that, that isn’t quite so reductive.
When Tuchel sat with media after announcing his squad last week – a squad that was rather low on old “big six” players and what people might consider “the elite” – he was asked about whether he had been rethinking pressing in America, and the old “Stuttgart school” he had been associated with.
“I think there is so much going on on a football field that it is scary,” Tuchel said. “There is man-marking, there is zonal into man-marking, there is deep blocks, there is back three, there is back four, long throws are back, the long ball from the goalkeeper is back. Everything is back, and everything changes between matches and it changes even within matches. Change of position is back. Overlapping, underlapping is back.”
And now, evidently, crossing is back.
It never went away, of course, but a lot of data shows that its usage had dropped – especially around the peak Pep Guardiola years. In 2018-19, the number of high crosses per game in the Premier League was at 24.2, having fallen from 38.2 in 2008-09.
England themselves frequently showcased sharp interchanges through the centre over this period, especially in those winnable games like this.
As Tuchel indicated, however, there has been a lot of evolution. You only have to look at the Premier League every week, where an emphasis on physically imposing players is back.
That is best illustrated by Arsenal, who supplied four players to this England team. They weren’t admittedly Arsenal’s biggest player but it was still a physical powerhouse like Declan Rice who headed in that second goal for 2-0. That, inevitably, was from as vintage a cross as you can get from Reece James. A brilliant delivery, and perhaps one reason why Tuchel wasn’t so bothered to not have Trent Alexander-Arnold in this squad.
It was another Arsenal player in Madueke that supplied the cross for the game-breaking first goal, Christian Garcia feeling forced to intervene and inadvertently head the ball into his own goal.
That’s a classic show of getting it in the mixer. That’s also modern football.
As Tuchel himself said, many old-fashioned qualities are back. It’s better England make use of them if they can, especially if they have the players.
James can clearly provide a cross. There is an aerial threat and though it might not be enough to beat Spain, France or Argentina on its own it’s still not a bad weapon to have.
That, even after a game as tepid as this, and with the box as congested as this, is now that bit clearer.
