England blow another 1-0 lead - The Warm-Up
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Updated 09/09/2021 at 08:13 GMT
It won't stop them qualifying, but there was something strangely familiar about England taking the lead and then losing it against Poland. It's also not the first time that Gareth Southgate has been reluctant to use his bench. And it's been confirmed: Brazil's football authorities are huge Scott Carson fans.
England players react
Image credit: Getty Images
THURSDAY'S BIG STORIES
It Is Happening Again
The dream is over. All hope is gone. Clear away the bunting, fold the plastic flags. Leicester Square can sleep easy. It's not coming home. England will not be qualifying for Qatar 2022 … with a perfect record.
What? Well, fine. You try and squeeze some drama from this England, this points hoover, this relentless qualifying automaton. There was a time when a late equaliser in Poland might have thrown an entire campaign into jeopardy; there was a time, conversely, when 1-1 in Warsaw would have been a seriously useful result. Now it's more or less a curiosity.
At least, that is, in the short term. One consequence of England being so good at qualifying is that the questions change.
Immediate fretting about getting to the finals is replaced by longer term, more abstract fretting: what does this mean for the finals. The pessimists — and when it comes to England, everybody's a pessimist at heart — have to take a longer view.
And in this case, it probably goes something like: another 1-0 lead allowed to slip away; another game in which Gareth Southgate does something weird with his substitutes. Explaining that second point after the game, Southgate said that he didn't make any changes because he didn't think he needed to.
We were playing well, we were in control. At those moments, it's not easy to come on as a substitute and we would be taking people off for the sake of it, frankly. We were in total control, there was no issue, why disrupt it when you're in control?
He's such a nice guy, he's never even heard of time wasting.
It's a funny thing, control. Southgate is of course right to say that England seemed to have it, seemed to be in it. And England's goal, scored from a big hole in front of the defensive line after the withdrawal of Grzegorz Krychowiak, might be taken as evidence that the value of your substitutions can go down as well as up. But control at one-up is a delicate thing: all it takes is one drop of the shoulder and the whole thing falls apart.
This wasted one-goal lead is of little significance compared to the one England lost at Wembley over the summer, or against Croatia back in 2018. Or Colombia at that same World Cup, or the Netherlands in 2019's Nations League semis. But if we want to get speculative, to get long term about things, then all these games are connected by control: England taking a lead and with it a measure of control, before losing the latter and then the former.
Or to put it another way: it's possible to control a 1-0 lead against a decent side by defending carefully and cleverly, by keeping the other team at bay, by doing all the things England are apparently not quite able to do. But the other way, an innovative and radical technique that might just suit England a little better, would be to score a second goal. Think inside the box, Gareth!
Come In, Number Three
Did you think this international break couldn't get any sillier? Oh, sweet late-summer, pretty-much-autumn child. We've hit a new low, or possibly high, or maybe both, and the upshot is that Scott Carson may have to start for Manchester City at the weekend.
You may recall that several Premier League clubs refused to release their Brazilian internationals, on the grounds that they'd have to go through quarantine on the way back. Well, Brazil's FA have asked FIFA to punish these clubs for this refusal: instead of a ten-day Covid quarantine, the players in question are looking at five days on the FIFA naughty step.
Are the Brazilian authorities taking this action to preserve the integrity of the international game, in the face of such trifling matters as, er, a global pandemic? Well, no. And you can tell because they haven't lodged a complaint about Everton's Richarlison. Because they like Everton. Because Everton let Richarlison go to the Olympics.
You almost have to admire the purity of it. Not even an attempt to claim the moral high ground.
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Neymar and Richarlison
Image credit: Getty Images
This is, in essence, the perfect storm for pandemic football: when the complicated force of wildly variant covid restrictions meets the intransigent object of football, football, always football. We've already seen Argentina's players chased from the pitch by health authorities for travelling, allegedly inappropriately; now we're faced with the prospect of players being kept from the pitch for not travelling. Something's gone wrong somewhere. Or possibly everywhere.
There's always the chance of some late negotiated settlement, or the exciting prospect of England's clubs just ignoring FIFA and ploughing on regardless. If Liverpool pick Alisson and Leeds pick Raphina, presumably they can't both forfeit the game 3-0. But if Ederson is banned, and with Zack Steffen having tested positive earlier in the week, that means it's time for Scott Carson. Or some other kid from the academy. But please, Scott Carson. He deserves this. We all deserve this.
IN OTHER NEWS
Here's 18-year-old Ricardo Pepi scoring on his debut for the USA, delivering three crucial points, and securing himself the no.9 shirt for the next 15 years. A nice header, but we're here for the commentary. "Pepi by name, peppy by nature!" A beat. The watching world waits for the next line — "Do a barrel roll!" — but it doesn't come.
RETRO CORNER
There's a new BBC documentary about the Premier League's early years on iPlayer. However, the Warm-Up hasn't seen it yet, because we got distracted and started looking up memorable games on Youtube. Here's that time Manchester United went to fellow title contenders Norwich City and found the freedom of Carrow Road awaited them. Counter-attacking perfection.
HAT TIP
Over to the Athletic (£), where Simon Hughes has been digging into the use (and abuse) of sleeping pills in the English game. One doctor calls it "a disease spreading quietly across football", as players attempt to manage their relentless schedule with habit-forming prescription drugs.
Mike Phenix cannot really remember Paul Carden calling him over. He cannot really remember Southport’s manager sending him on against Kidderminster Harriers in October 2015. He cannot really remember Carden waving him back soon after. He cannot really remember the ignominy of being substituted as a substitute after just 10 minutes or so. Yet Phenix just about remembers the night before. He could not sleep. "So, I took a couple of these tablets off my mate… wiped me out." The rest of the weekend was more or less a blank.
COMING UP
We've been trapped in this international break for nearly three months now, and it's still not over. Uruguay vs. Ecuador! Paraguay vs. Venezuela! There's still time for CONMEBOL to get even weirder! Fish raining from the sky!
Carefully concealed under a large, fish-proof umbrella, Tom Adams will be here tomorrow.
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