As ever, England expects. The Three Lions kicked off their Euro 2024 campaign in Gelsenkirchen last night looking to go one better than their last European outing and lift their first major tournament trophy since 1966.
Bookmakers and pundits had England as one of the favourites going into the tournament. But while the 1-0 victory over Serbia put the team in control of Group C, manager Gareth Southgate left the stadium with “a banquet’s worth of food for thought”, said The Times‘s Jonathan Northcroft.
What did the commentators say?
Sven-Göran Eriksson’s oft-quoted assessment of England games as “first half good; second half not so good” may have passed into football parody, but watching this “lopsided” win over Serbia, it felt “as if [the former England coach] had alighted on some eternal truth about this team at major tournaments”, said The Telegraph‘s chief sports writer Oliver Brown.
“The transformation was maddening,” wrote Brown. For the opening 30 minutes “we were watching a rejuvenated England, dominant and decisive”, before the match settled into a “time-honoured pattern, where a frenetic start gave way to a shapeless conclusion”.
This “occasionally awkward” 1-0 win was certainly not on the level of Germany’s 5-1 thrashing of Scotland, said Miguel Delaney in The Independent, and it “will raise new questions over what England need to do to get to that level”.
Phil Foden – recently named Premier League player of the season – was once again anonymous in an England shirt, while the experiment of playing Trent Alexander-Arnold alongside Declan Rice in midfield proved inconclusive. Harry Kane had just two touches out of 385 made by England in the first half.
Luckily for Southgate and England, Jude Bellingham, who scored the winning goal with a diving header, is “one of the few parts of this team where there is absolutely no doubt”, said Delaney.
Comparing his impact to that of Pelé and Cristiano Ronaldo, Martin Samuel in The Times said that “the greatest players, in the heat of the moment, don’t flinch from the fight”.
Bellingham is “not out of control, but nor is he shy when tested”, said Samuel. He could be the player of the tournament: “He just needs to shape it, and shape England too.”
The Stourbridge-born Real Madrid midfielder was likewise “the toast of the European media”, said Mail Online, “but they found little else to praise”.
There had been “whispers of a new golden generation” coming into the tournament, but “this crop of hopefuls failed to pass the eye test for Europe’s cynical scribes” as the players came in for “razor-sharp criticism” after Sunday’s laboured win.
French sports newspaper L’Equipe gave John Stones a particularly withering 3/10 personal rating in what was a “disappointing performance overall” that was “marked by a drop in intensity in the second half”.
German tabloid Bild agreed that England will have to “step up their game” if they are to lift the European Championship trophy come 14 July. But while Sunday might not have been barnstorming football, as Spanish sports site Marca said: “In a short tournament it is more important to win than to convince.”
What next?
“In the end, Southgate’s tendency towards caution did not cost England,” said Brown in The Telegraph, “but it was worrying to witness this team sit back again on an early lead, just as they had, to great cost, against Croatia in 2018 and Italy in 2021.
“The great teams know when to go for the kill, and yet you wonder if this is a gear England even possess.”
If in doubt, international managers will always be tempted to get all their best players on the pitch at the same time. The “conundrum”, said Jamie Carragher also in The Telegraph, “is whether what is gained with so many high-class personnel in the line-up is lost with the set-up”.
This is especially true when it came to captain and talisman Harry Kane, “a multi-tasking, modern centre-forward who was reduced to one-dimension”, said Carragher.
Short-term, “I would expect Southgate to persist with Sunday night’s plan”, he said. “But going forward, getting the most from Kane is the only way in which England can win the competition.”
Delaney concluded in The Independent that “any tournament is a voyage of discovery”. But “Southgate still has a lot to figure out”.