Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 26
July 9, 2024
Euro 2024: semis arrive with Spain v France, plus England and Netherlands news – as it happened
On the other hand, Spain have been the most exciting team left in the tournament. The winger duo of Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal have gone viral for their skills, dance moves and now their baby photos?
France’s top goalscorer so far is Mr Own Goal. The only goalscorer on their team is Mbappé who scored his spot kick against Poland in the group stage. Maybe we’ll see a return of the forward’s World Cup final spirit in the game tonight.
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Netherlands v England: tactical conundrums that will settle semi-final
Gareth Southgate must decide on a back three or four, counter Cody Gakpo and weigh up Harry Kane’s struggles
Precedent has gone out of the window. Gareth Southgate has always been a cautious manager, somebody who drew up his blueprints and stuck to them – and then came this tournament. Having failed to identify a partner for Declan Rice at the back of midfield, he has chopped and changed; that, allied to the lack of left-footed full-backs, led to the switch to a back three against Switzerland. Luke Shaw was fit enough to play the final 12 minutes plus extra time of that game so it may be he can start and offer natural width on the left. Even if he does, given the greater fluency of England in the first half of the quarter-final, it seems likely the back three will be retained. That then means either Kieran Trippier as right wing-back with Bukayo Saka moved into the forward line and, probably, Phil Foden missing out; or, more likely, Saka remaining at wing-back and Trippier standing down. Trippier, though, is one of England’s more vocal organisers and, with no Harry Maguire or Jordan Henderson, that may be a quality Southgate is reluctant to lose.
Continue reading...July 8, 2024
Euro 2024: countdown to Spain v France and Netherlands v England semi-finals – as it happened
More build-up from Germany as the four semi-finalists continued their preparations
Three years on from the racist abuse Saka received after his penalty against Italy and about three weeks on from seeing his face plastered over back pages after England’s loss to Iceland, most people are just happy to see Saka smiling.
Read more about Saka’s defiant performance here.
Continue reading...England are somehow one game away from the Euro 2024 final – Football Daily podcast
Max Rushden is joined by Barney Ronay, Jonathan Liew and Jonathan Wilson to preview the semi-finals, including England v Netherlands
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On the podcast today; England are somehow within one game of the Euro 2024 final. It’s Gareth Southgate’s third semi-final in four tournaments, but how do we assess this one and how, if at all, will his approach change from here?
Continue reading...Euro 2024: countdown to Spain v France and Netherlands v England semi-finals – live
Three years on from the racist abuse Saka received after his penalty against Italy and about three weeks on from seeing his face plastered over back pages after England’s loss to Iceland, most people are just happy to see Saka smiling.
Read more about Saka’s defiant performance here.
Continue reading...July 7, 2024
Gareth Southgate creates an environment for England to get lucky | Jonathan Wilson
Southgate might be better at the management than the football but an implausible triumph for his team is still possible
Club football, at least at the elite level, is meticulously planned. Teams of analysts pore over the data, find the patterns, identify the signings who will fit the style and mitigate areas of weakness, highlight potential flaws in opponents. The richest teams can buy not only the best players but also the best coaches and the best analysts and, as a result, elite club football, in as much as a sport as capricious as football ever can be, is predictable.
International football is wild. You can’t buy to fill the gaps. Squads end up so unbalanced and incoherent that coaches may as well be working at Manchester United. Managers can prepare but time is limited. History is always present; cultures even now remain defined. Spain will pass. France will grind. Portugal will defer to Cristiano Ronaldo. England will retreat inexplicably in defence of a lead (and, at times, a draw). Coaches have limited time with players who are being trained week-to-week in a vast range of different styles.
Continue reading...July 6, 2024
Normal service resumed as Weghorst brings order from chaos for Netherlands | Jonathan Wilson
Striker might not be Cruyffian idea of the Total Football frontman but he found way to break down Turkey defence
Orthodoxy, in the end, prevailed. International football, perhaps, always has a slightly retro feel, with its teams of mismatched parts, the basic pressing structures, the preponderance of games decided not by tactical plans or even ability, but by human desire and passion and doing the right thing at just the right time. It is, perhaps, a more heroic form of the game, a world in which there is still a place for champions to rise above the analysis of the technocrats.
And there is little more retro than the tactic, in extremis, of throwing on a big man. For Ronald Koeman, as for Louis van Gaal before him, when there is an emergency for the Netherlands, call for Wout Weghorst. The Burnley striker might not be the Cruyffian idea of the Total Footballing front man, but this is not the first time he has turned a game for his country after coming off the bench. Weghorst didn’t score, but he gave the Netherlands a focal point to their attack around which Cody Gakpo, Memphis Depay and Xavi Simons could operate, and he gave them a way that Austria couldn’t find in the last 16 to break down this Turkish defence. He actually won only one header, touched the ball just 13 times, but presence is not easily measured by statistics.
Continue reading...Euro 2024 is a party – but continent’s fractures are there for all to see | Jonathan Wilson
This Germany team could not emulate side of 2006 in a tournament intertwined with complicated nationalism
For much of Germany’s Euro 2024 quarter-final against Spain, it had seemed like a modern rewrite of their 2006 World Cup quarter-final against Argentina. In both games the technically more accomplished Spanish-speakers took the lead about five minutes after half-time, before the doughty Teutons ground their way back, taking advantage of some debatable substitutions, equalising in the final 10 minutes with a left-wing cross that was headed on to the goalscorer.
A German victory on penalties seemed inevitable, the only question whether Manuel Neuer would ostentatiously consult notes scribbled on hotel notepaper and secreted in his sock before each kick as Jens Lehmann had 18 years previously.
Continue reading...July 1, 2024
The Ronaldo show is unstoppable and reduces others to bit-part players | Jonathan Wilson
In this world of celebrity worship, the winning of football matches is a secondary concern. It’s all about Ronaldo
There is a fascination always as legends fade, to watch how they rage against the diminution of their own powers, to see embodied in one shrugging, pouting frame the eternal human battle with mortality. Decay and decrepitude have their allure; what the romantics saw in a ruined abbey, so others will see in the dwindling figure of Cristiano Ronaldo.
Some day there will be a Portugal match that is not about Ronaldo – but not here, not yet. It wasn’t just about the penalty he had saved by Jan Oblak in extra time, which left him in tears. He did, at least, make up for it in the shootout. Everything is about Ronaldo; Portuguese football has become the great psychodrama of his ageing. Diogo Costa may have saved three penalties in the shootout, but even then this was about Ronaldo.
Continue reading...June 30, 2024
Ruthless Rodri crushes Georgia’s fairytale and keeps Spain on track | Jonathan Wilson
Midfielder is as close to a footballing certainty as you can get, ensuring Luis de la Fuente’s side broke Georgia’s hearts
Nothing in football is certain, but Rodri is perhaps as close as it’s possible to get. There are times when it seems he is the teacher stepping in to a kids’ game to make sure it doesn’t become too one-sided, the grown-up who doesn’t have to bother with the things like running. He just strolls about, delivering accurate pass after accurate pass and, occasionally, scoring vital goals.
This was Rodri’s 89th game since Manchester City lost 1-0 at Tottenham in the Premier League on 5 February 2023. Since then he has lost only twice. If you take out games in which Scott McTominay was on the opposing side, he hasn’t lost at all. Quite why McTominay should be his kryptonite is unclear, but rivals should as a matter of urgency isolate whatever the active component is and start trying to manufacture it synthetically. Until Georgia’s legs went in the second half, they were excellent on Sunday but for that one vital absence: they lacked a McTominay.
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