It’s not like Boris to miss a trick. With just four days to go until the European Union referendum in Britain, and both sides grasping at so many straws it has been reported that chiropractors specialising in camels are at breaking point, it’s a wonder the Brexit boys aren’t doing a spot of last-minute canvassing in France.
After all, lest we forget, Europe is in crisis. While England boss Roy Hodgson must solve the conundrum of which of last season’s two leading Premier League goalscorers to leave on the substitutes’ bench against Slovakia—maybe even both—the rest of the continent can barely muster a decent striker between them. First they take our jobs, next they’ll be after our front men.
Such talk could be considered of the John Bull variety, were it not for the fact heavyweights Germany, Portugal, France and Italy, would all probably snatch your hand off at having Steve Bull at their disposal. Brexit bumbler Boris Johnson would likely go down a storm in Saint-Etienne.
A blonde lobster in Union Jack shorts alternating between lecturing half-cut Brits on how Brussels bureaucracy is the real reason English clubs are struggling in the Champions League by day, and rugby tackling marauding Russians with a twin passion for bum bags and violence by night.
Just imagine him trying to fit in: “I love Tottenham, but I hate the Spurs! Chaps, where are you going? Lads…” All before hopping back to Blighty through a Eurotunnel he wants to block with sausage rolls if victorious.
A dearth of high-quality European strikers—there’s a joke here somewhere about France and its unions—has been an undeniable feature of Euro 2016. When allied to the fact the art of defending is largely spoken of in the past tense, as relevant to today’s game as hanging a piece of Renaissance art at the Tate Modern, it hardly seems hyperbolic to report the death of the traditional No. 9.
It is certainly a theorem not being unduly challenged at Euro 2016. There are multiple factors as to why, after the second round of group-stage matches were completed, an average of 1.96 goals had been scored per game, dipping dramatically from 2.88 four years ago in Poland and Ukraine. That’s lower than any World Cup, and any European Championship since 1980. After Sunday’s games, it is now as low as 1.85 goals per game.
For starters, the increase of participating nations from 16 to 24 has meant the involvement of several sides more likely to park the bus. It is no surprise some games have resembled a traditional domestic cup-tie between a giant and an underdog. Essentially that’s what they are.
The only living organism in the world that would expect Iceland to go hell for leather against Portugal is currently refusing to get out of his kit, and listening to “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” on a loop.
There’s also the fact finishing third will be enough to qualify from four of the six groups. The possibility of three points potentially being enough to claim a last-16 spot means less inclination to take undue risk in the first couple of games. The remarkable number of late goals is also important, with 13 out of the 48 scored so far coming in the 85th minute or later.
At the same time, it would be disingenuous to suggest a better complement of strikers would not have troubled the scoresheet more often.
Arsene Wenger, not a scaremonger by nature, has long since proffered a view that Europe no longer produces proper, dyed-in-the-wool strikers in the traditional sense. He credits a decline in those who can either lead the line with bullishness, or are so infatuated with scoring goals they are not afraid to be hurt (or hurt others) to do it, as primarily being a result of the death of street football.
Academies produce technically proficient players, but ones cocooned from the real world. A world where centre-halves kick, nip, pinch, punch and nibble, and think practitioners of Rabonas would benefit from breaking rocks in searing midday sun.
No wonder Wenger, his words relayed here by Rory Smith for ESPN in 2014, is so keen to sign Jamie Vardy for Arsenal:
I believe [we live in a world where] society has changed.
We are much more protected than we were 30 years ago. We have all changed. We have all become a bit softer. [The South Americans] played street football, park football, football with friends. [For them], outside training [with their clubs], there was football as well.
Maybe in our history, street football has gone. In street football when you are 10 years old, you play with 15-year-olds, so you have to be shrewd, you have to show that you are good, you have to fight, to win impossible balls.
When it is all a bit more formulated, then it is less developing your individual skill, your fighting attitude.
Europe doesn‘t produce strikers anymore.
In this respect, for all the criticism aired at English football’s failure to produce enough international-class players, in terms of strikers, Hodgson‘s squad looks in pretty rude health.
At the 2002 World Cup the big decision for Sven-Goran Eriksson was to drop Darius Vassell after he had started England’s opener against Sweden. Only once in Vassell’s career did he break into double figure for league goals, scoring 12 for Aston Villa in 2001/02.
For Monday’s final group game against Slovakia it is taken as a given that Hodgson will leave out Harry Kane, even if he’s staying tight-lipped in his media briefings. The Tottenham man has looked leggy in the game and a half he’s played so far, perhaps no surprise given the Wales match was the 62nd he had been involved in this season.
His likely replacement against Slovakia, Daniel Sturridge, has played 45 times for Liverpool over the past two seasons combined. Kane’s figure for club and country over the same period is 118. No wonder when England’s players take a water break he requests warm milk.
That England can afford to leave out a player who scored 25 Premier League goals last season and 46 in his two full campaigns combined, should be cause for genuine optimism. Vardy, scorer of only one goal fewer than Kane last season, like Sturridge, is equally champing at the bit after his cameo and equaliser against Wales.
International tournaments are brutal. Players don’t have time to play themselves back into form, or in Kane’s case, enjoy a week on a sun-lounger to rejuvenate legs that have stopped running exactly where he wants them to. He needs a break, unfortunately for both him and England, his trough in a season of billowing peaks has come smack-bang in the middle of a European Championship.
Hodgson said it was a straightforward call to bring on Vardy and Sturridge at half-time against Wales. Presumably then it should be equally as straightforward to start them both against Slovakia. Raheem Sterling is so out of sorts that it might be a relief to him were he left out.
A conservative streak, and predilection to tinker, could see Hodgson indulge his infatuation with Jack Wilshere and change his side’s shape to employ Wayne Rooney at the tip of a diamond formation.
England have looked better with a front three, though, and there is no reason why Sturridge and Adam Lallana either side of Vardy wouldn’t work against Slovakia. All three are capable of clever movement, with Vardy and Sturridge interchangeable on the left, and Lallana adding a little more discipline and willingness to track back on the right.
With Slovakia likely to sit deep, there is an argument Vardy won’t have any space to get in behind, thus negating his key asset. He adds aggression and needle, though, and forces defenders into mistakes with an incessant work rate that makes you question yourself, and think about trying harder on Monday morning.
A nothing ball into the channel invariably becomes a foot race when it is Vardy giving chase. He would also almost certainly have buried the chance Sterling skied against Wales.
Sturridge‘s willingness to take players on and make them commit, though exasperating at times when he overdoes it, could be key to breaking down deep-lying teams. He plays the game intuitively. Now and then he’s on a different planet to his team-mates, but then to get to the latter stages of an international tournament, you often need a player who is out of this world. Sturridge is England’s.
The trio has only previously played together once before, a friendly defeat to the Netherlands in March. Still, with Hodgson playing his pack these days with the chilled air of a little jazz on a sedate Sunday afternoon, a lack of playing time together should not unduly worry him. I wouldn’t put it past him to give Marcus Rashford at least a half on Monday. Such has been Rooney’s influence in midfield in both games, the possibility of him playing further up the field has rarely been been mooted.
The opening gambit then in Johnson’s final speech before Thursday’s referendum could well be: “Europe might not produce strikers anymore, but England have loads of the b–ers.”
When the tournament favourites have as their first choice striker the boo-boy of the politest fans in English football, something is afoot. According to Opta, no player has a better boos-per-minute ratio than Olivier Giroud.
In fairness, the two undeniably world-class European centre-forwards, Robert Lewandowski and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, are currently toiling at having the weight of a nation’s expectations on their shoulders. That, and a lack of decent service into the box due to Polish and Swedish supply lines being more prosaic than polished. To watch either drop deep in an attempt to influence play is like Alfred Hitchcock leaving his place behind the camera to lend a hand in hair and make-up.
Germany’s blank against Poland saw them employ a false nine, which I’m still not convinced isn’t often just a polite way of saying you’re not in possession of a good nine. Presumably Mario Gotze, Mesut Ozil, Thomas Muller, Julian Draxler, and Andre Schurrle have to play rock-paper-scissors before every game to decide who gets the gig. Joachim Low has long since become exasperated at no hands being raised on requesting a volunteer.
On the night, Gotze was given football’s poisoned chalice, lasting 66 minutes of a game Germany finished with 69 per cent possession, three shots on target, and zero goals.
Gotze is a fine player, albeit not in outstanding form after a difficult season at Bayern Munich, but there’s a reason why “nine” is prefixed by “false” in this instance. Just because a bodybuilder from Crewe on Stars in their Eyes says, “Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be Elvis,” it doesn’t make him the King.
Although Gotze would argue he knows all about being lonesome after the Poland game.
Cristiano Ronaldo was more all shook up in Portugal’s goalless draw with Austria. Playing an orthodox No. 9 role he enjoys about as much as watching Lionel Messi pick up Ballon d’Ors, he managed to hit the woodwork, miss a penalty and have a goal chalked off for offside. All of which occurred in an eight-minute spell best watched with a canned laughter track. There was nothing canned about the sound of 330,000 Icelanders p—ing themselves laughing.
When Europe’s best player is forced to play outside of his ideal position due to a lack of viable alternatives, it’s a measure of the shortage Wenger laments. Portugal coach Fernando Santos paired Ronaldo with Nani. A problem shared is a problem halved and all that, but it’s not exactly Kevin Keegan and John Toshack.
After demonstrating a maelstrom of emotions all evening, by the end Ronaldo had taken 10 shots on goal, with pretty much every Portugal set piece in Austria’s half fair game for the captain. The only surprise was that he continued to let Rui Patricio take goal kicks. Over the two games Portugal have played, he has had 20 shots, more than nine other teams.
Ronaldo is the Crystal Maze captain who elects to play every challenge himself, even after he has suffered an automatic lock-in.
Gareth Bale has scored two free-kicks for Wales and never shirked his responsibilities, yet playing centrally—more often than not with his back to goal—he’s looked hamstrung. The space he gallops into when employed wider is not a luxury he enjoys through the middle. Against England, bar his goal, he spent large swathes of the game as though a supporter, watching on while his team-mates bid to keep their neighbours at arm’s length.
Like many of the coaches in France, Chris Coleman appears to have concluded that with goals at a premium, it’s paramount to have your leading light as high up the pitch as possible.
Italy have bucked the trend by using an old-fashioned partnership in the form of Eder and Graziano Pelle.
Toward the back end of qualifying, and in the build-up to France, Antonio Conte nailed his colours to the pair’s mast. Eder and Pelle started seven of Italy’s 10 games prior to the tournament opener against Belgium, despite neither figuring too prominently for Inter Milan and Southampton respectively at the end of the domestic season. Neither are outstanding as individuals.
Two wins from as many matches against the much-fancied Belgians, and an always-stubborn Sweden outfit, has seen them score a goal apiece. Not a bad start for an Azzurri side labelled the worst in Italian history by many before they had even landed in France.
By using two strikers, Italy have been successful in pressing the opposition back, with runners from deep often profiteering from space vacated by neat movement on the part of the duo. They’re not Butch and Sundance quality, but as partnerships go, they are probably good enough to pose the odd problem for any defence. Other than perhaps Italy’s.
For Spain, Alvaro Morata was dire against the Czech Republic and deadly against Turkey.
Given Vicente del Bosque‘s side has now gone 10 games without conceding a goal and have one of the tournament’s outstanding players so far in Andres Iniesta, it may soon start to look a little ominous for everyone else. Even more so if Morata uses his performance against Turkey as a springboard for his international career. If he flops, they’ll probably revert back to a false nine, and render this article redundant by winning Euro 2016 at a canter.
Of the rest, not even West Ham United have been tempted to make a mega-money offer for any of the other strikers on show. Given they were weighing up a £26.5 million bid for Gandhi before a member of the backroom staff pointed out he died in 1948, it’s a measure of the lack of quality No. 9s at the Euros. They might not be as fashionable as they once were, but if either Low or Del Bosque claimed they wouldn’t love to be able to call upon a Miroslav Klose or David Villa they would be lying.
Hodgson insists any of the five strikers he has brought to Euro 2016 are more than good enough to help England into the tournament’s latter stages. We will likely have a better idea of just how much depth he has at his disposal after the Slovakia game.
Maybe for now, it’s better not to take Boris’ word for it.
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