Why England Were Better Than They Looked Against Slovakia
Two late goals for England - including a brilliant overhead kick from Jude Bellingham - saved England's Euro 2024 against Slovakia. But while it was yet another performance that has seen Gareth Southgate's men deservedly come in for more criticism, there were a few moments in the game that pointed to things finally starting to turn for them.
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00:00Right then, hello everybody, Adam Cleary, Avec442, and England vs Slovakia, no matter
00:09how much you may have tried to repress those 120 minutes in your memory, it is time to
00:13talk about them.
00:14Now on the one hand it was probably one of the worst performances you've ever seen
00:17from England, but on the other it included one of the best moments you've ever seen
00:21from England, and hidden within the story of that complete and utter mess are of course
00:26reasons to be incredibly worried, but also maybe just a few reasons to actually be encouraged.
00:33All right, so obviously no major changes for England here, but we did get the one thing
00:39everyone was asking for, and that was Kobe Meunier starting in the midfield instead of
00:44Conor Gallagher.
00:45His whole thing is you let your play through the press, he'll get you on the ball a bit
00:48more, and he did, mostly, but that was not what the problem was today.
00:52Because rather than pressing England high and stopping them having the ball building
00:56up in sort of their own third of the pitch, Slovakia instead sat off and just completely
01:01blocked out the central part of the pitch.
01:04And that is, to be fair, probably how I would set up against this England side, you get
01:07nice and organised defensive lines in the middle and you say to them, it doesn't matter
01:11how much quality you've got in these central areas, we're going to make it really difficult
01:16for you to play through, so instead you're going to have to stretch us, and England,
01:20for various reasons, cannot stretch teams.
01:22And this forced England into a bit of a weird shape, okay, I'm going to show you the average
01:27positions of them across the 90 minutes, and first off, you basically have to disregard
01:32the Kai Osaka from this graph because he spent quite a large chunk of those 120 minutes at
01:37right wing back and at left back, so he's sort of getting dragged away from where he
01:41spent the majority of the game in this graph.
01:44But what it does show you is that structurally, England basically went to a back three with
01:48Kyle Walker on the right, Kieran Trippier pushed all the way up this side, providing
01:52all the air quotes with, Phil Foden was pretty much alongside Harry Kane in the centre, with
01:57Bellingham behind them as a ten.
01:59Now average position graphs are useful to an extent, but they very rarely tell you the
02:03whole story, so instead, I'm going to swap this with the pass map, and you'll just notice
02:07here there's a little gap where there should be a line, and that tells you that Phil Foden
02:12did not connect with a single pass once in the game with Harry Kane or Jude Bellingham.
02:17He never found them, they never found him.
02:20Now we'll get to Foden a little bit later on, but I just want to show you what this
02:23sort of system did for the respective performances of Kyle Walker and Kieran Trippier, right?
02:27I'm going to show you both their heat maps at exactly the same time here.
02:31Now Trippier, as you can see, received the ball in this area of the pitch an awful lot,
02:34he was always England's out ball on the left-hand side, again, we'll come back to that, and
02:38Kyle Walker, yes, he does get up once or twice, certainly in the early phases of the game,
02:43he spent most of sort of the second half of the first half, and all of the second half
02:48sort of sitting as this right-sided centre-back.
02:50And Slovakia basically forced England to do this, by the way, in the opening exchanges,
02:54they got in down that side more than once as a result of Walker pushing up to try and
02:59get nearer to Pekaj Osaka.
03:00And Slovakia, give them their credit, their goal actually comes from this shape that they
03:04forced England into.
03:05When this long ball comes over that caused all the problems, you see Kieran Trippier,
03:09he's way further forward on the left-hand side, and Walker, Gaye and Stones have sort
03:14of come across as a back three.
03:15Now it's a mistake from John Stones, he gets drawn to the ball when he really should sort
03:19of leave Mark Gaye to deal with it, and his movement across to the left-hand side pulls
03:23England's entire defence that way and creates this just huge amount of space that Kyle Walker,
03:29who shouldn't be there in the first place, kind of has to decide how to cover.
03:33Now Mark Gaye also makes a mistake here, he just kind of stands there, allows the player
03:36to run off him.
03:37But one thing, I don't think anyone's pointed out yet, right, as the danger appears, as
03:42it becomes clear, Slovakia have a good chance, I want you to note on the pitch where Kyle
03:47Walker is.
03:48Now what should be happening here is this is England's left-back, these are the two
03:52centre-backs, and a right-back should be around here somewhere.
03:55But because of Foden playing so centrally, so narrow, and Trippier having to provide
03:59all the attacking width down that side, they're actually shifted over one.
04:04Left-back, two centre-backs, right-back, enormous gap.
04:07Now because Stones recovers and gets goal-side of this attacker, Kyle Walker realises, ugh,
04:11I shouldn't be here, there's a huge hole on this opposite side, so he vacates the positions
04:17in, remember where that was, and scrambles across to cut out that pass.
04:21Now I'm not digging him out here because at the time of him making this decision, both
04:25Stones and Gaye are goal-side of these two attackers, so he technically does the right
04:30thing.
04:31But when he's allowed the player to make the run off him, just look where he receives that
04:35through ball.
04:36That is the exact part of the pitch that Kyle Walker was already in about two or three seconds
04:42before that.
04:43Now that is actually, in my opinion, pretty expertly manufactured by Slovakia, but it's
04:48part of the risk-reward of what England are trying to do here.
04:51By having somebody like Foden on that left-hand side, who's never going to stay on that left-hand
04:56side, doesn't want to be on that left-hand side, you're forced to commit another player
05:00to try and stretch Slovakia, because again, remember, they're all congested in the middle,
05:05you have to stretch them out, and as a result, you're short-handed and disorganised at the
05:09back.
05:10And this is why I said at the start of the video, there might just be a few reasons to
05:14be encouraged by this, because England stuck with it, it was technically the right thing
05:18to be doing, and then in the second half, just for a moment, it clicked perfectly and
05:23it tore Slovakia open with it.
05:24Now maybe I'm clutching at straws, maybe it's a coping mechanism after all the things I've
05:28been forced to watch England fail to do at the Euros so far, but the equaliser in the
05:3450th minute contained every single thing they were trying to do here, working in perfect
05:39harmony.
05:40But Kaio Saka receives the ball, not with his back to goal, not with a defender up his
05:43arse, but in a position where he can move forward into the attacking third.
05:47We haven't seen that enough.
05:48And then, rather than just leaving him completely isolated, there's a run provided by Jude Bellingham
05:53ahead of him, which gives him an option and also pulls a defender away, leaving him with
05:57some space.
05:58Harry Kane, rather than just dropping deep already, adding absolutely nothing to the
06:02situation, is running towards goal, he's forcing the Slovakia defence back, which means
06:06when he does receive his defeat, he's created a bit of space for himself.
06:09And just for once, as a little treat for all of us, because Phil Foden has come inside
06:14centrally and dragged the defender, leaving all this space on the left, Kieran Trippier
06:19actually uses it properly and runs into it.
06:22And then, and I mean truly do honestly savour how sweet this moment tastes, Trippier does
06:28what a left-footed left-back would do in this situation and uses his left foot.
06:33And had Phil Foden simply known what offside was, for the first time in this tournament,
06:39England would have looked at a complex defensive puzzle, correctly figured it out, and then
06:44beaten it.
06:45But of course, he didn't, so thus England didn't, so thus none of this really matters.
06:49But after a tournament performance that has so far been about as light and as fun as a
06:54Nordic crime drama where the victim is a very small girl, it was nice to see.
06:59And also of course, because one of the main hallmarks of all the lesser teams at the Euro
07:03so far has been great defensive organisation, as soon as this happened and then a few minutes
07:08later Trippier goes off for Saka, they were like, ah yes, of course, the left-hand side,
07:13we'll shut that off now.
07:14The thing is, these aren't like personal attacks on Trippier or Foden, I'm not saying they're
07:18bad players by any stretch of the imagination, it's just that Foden's going into a congested
07:23area where he's far easily to defend against, and he's obviously not got the link-ups with
07:27Bellingham and Kane that he does with his colleagues at Man City, and Kieran Trippier
07:31is just so unsuitable to be in this position and this role, it's causing huge issues.
07:37This is Foden's individual pass map for that game, and you'll notice there's like two themes
07:42to what's on offer here.
07:43First off, when he is holding the width on the left-hand side, so many of his passes
07:48are backwards.
07:49You can see these will be the ones here when England are building up, and he's out there
07:52instead of Trippier, they all just immediately sort of go backwards, and when he does get
07:55it in the final third, he's unable to sort of find players around the box or balls into
08:00the box.
08:01And you can see as well, he's obviously got licence to sort of float around to the right-hand
08:04side if that's where he thinks the opportunities are, if that's where he thinks he can make
08:08something happen, but even there, he's really struggling to do anything incisive.
08:12But the real problem, by a mile, is Kieran Trippier being right-footed, like I'll show
08:17you his pass map from the game, and it's very similar to Foden's in the sense that so many
08:22of them are back in field, he so rarely plays the ball down the line for Foden, or in particular,
08:28look how few times he even gets the ball where the space was.
08:32There were so many times in that match, just like the goal England had disallowed, where
08:37there was yawning chasms of space on that left-hand side because Foden had successfully
08:42dragged the defender all the way into the centre, but when the ball is played out to
08:46Trippier, he can't then take it on his left foot and drive into that space.
08:51He normally has to check, decide what he's going to do, and then because he can't go
08:55that way, come back in field.
08:57Like, it's frustrating enough when it happens in this part of the pitch, because you can
09:00see England basically hit a brick wall in their build-up and have to go back round the
09:05other way, but when it happens here, when the option is there for a left-footer to drive
09:09into the space that's being left, it's just, like, it's borderline unfair to have him in
09:14this position at this point.
09:15Like, trust me, he is a very good player, but when your objective is to stretch a team
09:21out across the line to create bits of space to play in, and then you've got a player in
09:25that space who can't play in that space, what's the point?
09:29Like, for crying out loud at this point, like, Marguer is not going to get to play in the
09:34Switzerland game, because when Trippier receives the ball here, and a left-back would have
09:38the option of going that way with it, he has to sort of be a bit indecisive, he kind of
09:42panics a bit, and he shorts the pass back on his right foot.
09:45But the thing is, if you've been watching the coverage of the Euros on this channel,
09:48you've heard me say all this, like, three or four times now.
09:52Foden's a huge tactical issue, and he's not quite got the synergy in that part of the
09:56pitch, and Kieran Trippier shouldn't be out there, and it's causing England all these
09:59problems, right?
10:00We knew all that going in, but the things we learned in this game that we knew, at least,
10:05were good.
10:06And by things, I mean Kobe Meunier.
10:08Now, this is a heat map from the matchup, but it's not actually Meunier's heat map,
10:12because I think his influence on the game was better sort of illustrated in Declan Rice's
10:17performance than it was his, right?
10:19Now, Rice, I actually thought was really, really good in this game, and this is pretty
10:22much what his heat maps look like for Arsenal.
10:24They're slightly more weighted across to the left-hand side, and yes, he is busy in his
10:28own half of the pitch, but look how much influence he's able to exert further up.
10:32And we just have not seen him be able to play like this for England this summer, because
10:36this is what his heat map looked like in the Denmark game.
10:39There was so much onus on him to be the one receiving that first pass out of defence,
10:44and as, again, we've discussed in loads of other videos, he hates doing that.
10:47He can't play a pass between the lines.
10:49He can't really beat a man.
10:51Every team England play want him in that position, because it's not where he's any good.
10:55But because England had Meunier there instead, then, first of all, Slovakia were not comfortable
11:00pressing them as high up the pitch as other teams have been.
11:02But also, he just wants to get on that ball regardless of where the defensive pressure
11:07is.
11:08You can see he's receiving it here, and he's being very neat, he's being very tidy,
11:11nothing too major.
11:12But also, he's getting into this half of the pitch, and he's taking the ball under pressure.
11:17Now, you saw it yourself.
11:18It wasn't just his passing.
11:19He was occasionally receiving the ball in really good positions, not being afraid to
11:23go past a player, having that sort of control, that skill, that ability to move the ball
11:27forward that we never, ever see from Rice.
11:30But there was one tiny, tiny moment in this game that practically had me out of my seat
11:35cheering.
11:36Meunier gets the ball here, and there is such, such an easy pass backwards.
11:42No disrespect to Declan Rice, but that is the pass he makes in that position.
11:46But Meunier goes, nah, come on, there must be something I can do forwards.
11:50He takes a slight risk.
11:51He gets it around the player.
11:52He gives it to Saka instead, and England fashion a chance out of that.
11:57And the one downside I will say about Meunier is that it was clear that the rest of the
12:01side don't fully trust him yet in those positions.
12:04When you've been playing so safe and so conservative and used to players having to give you a straight
12:09back in those positions, it's going to take a little bit of adjustment.
12:12It's going to take a little bit of faith to give them the ball and the kind of pressure
12:16they can handle.
12:17There was a load of times where I was screaming, Meunier, Meunier, Meunier.
12:20He'll turn.
12:20You'll get it on the half turn.
12:21You'll play it forward.
12:23And they just didn't want to do it.
12:25But they have to.
12:26They just absolutely have to start trusting him, right?
12:29I'll show you one more graph that illustrates why that is.
12:32OK, these are all of Jordan Pickford's successful passes, right?
12:36You'll see there's one or two of these are really long, but they are all right.
12:39I've checked the times.
12:41They are all past about the 85th minute where Slovakia were camped on the edge of their
12:45own box, right?
12:46Everything else he did successfully in the game was short.
12:49It was tidy.
12:49It was composed.
12:50It was building out from the back.
12:53And these are all his unsuccessful passes.
12:57Almost every single time in regular play, Jordan Pickford went long from the back where
13:02they didn't trust giving it to Meunier to try and build forwards.
13:06England lost possession.
13:08Now, I am genuinely kind of astonished at sort of how many times this didn't work.
13:12You'd expect one or two to be in there somewhere.
13:15Harry Kane is genuinely very good at dropping off and holding up the ball.
13:18But he was losing those individual battles against Slovakia.
13:21It was not an option for England at all.
13:24And all it did was invite the pressure back on.
13:26And the thing is, that's sort of the end of all the insightful analysis I'm capable
13:31of providing for this game, right?
13:33Because had that finished 1-0, there'd be huge sections here about Harry Kane's inability
13:37to really get on the end of chances, about Jude Bellingham's entirely anonymous performance,
13:41how they should both have obviously been substituted way before the end of that game.
13:47But it was clear that Gareth Southgate has a level of trust in their ability to deliver
13:53moments out of virtually nothing, right?
13:56And you can't really talk about that with graphs or stats or any of that stuff.
14:00He chucked Tony on with 90 seconds left to sort of disrupt the defence a bit.
14:04They persisted with these floated, sort of hopeful balls into the box.
14:09And then magically, in the 95th minute,
14:12one produced one of the greatest England goals you've ever seen at a major tournament.
14:16Like, had he taken those players off, that would not have happened.
14:20So, yeah.
14:22Like, I mean, it's not really something you would normally say on a tactics and analysis
14:27channel, but when you've got footballers capable of delivering you moments out of nothing,
14:32then when nothing is literally what's happening, you just sort of sometimes have to trust them,
14:39I guess?
14:40And I think maybe that's why I feel slightly hopeful about the rest of the tournament
14:46after that performance.
14:47Like, England's problems feel obvious and like things that can work to address.
14:52And defensively, aside from like one lapse in concentration and a blammer from about 45 yards,
14:58they've been largely quite solid.
15:01Like, you look at the struggles all the other major countries are having in this tournament,
15:04and clearly nobody, aside maybe Spain, have really got to grips with what they're trying to do yet.
15:09Just, there's something here.
15:11Maybe it's just individual greatness, but there is something here.
15:15Now, yes, it does sort of feel unlikely that given how good Switzerland have been,
15:19that England would get past them purely on vibes alone,
15:22which this system feels like it is.
15:24But if they can just slightly address one or two of these issues,
15:27maybe Luke Shaw comes back in, maybe they trust Kobe Maneuw a bit more.
15:31They've clearly got the personnel on this side to just make something happen.
15:35And my God, if they get all the way to the final and actually win the thing,
15:38playing the worst football you've ever seen,
15:40I promise you right now, you will not care one tiny little bit.
15:46Anyway, though, like I say, maybe this is all just some enormous,
15:49deranged coping mechanism on my part.
15:50So we'd dearly, dearly love to know what you all think in the comments below.
15:54We've had unbelievable interaction on our England videos thus far.
15:57The comments have been absolutely brilliant.
15:59So please do contribute down there.
16:01If you don't want to miss any more videos, these Euros, my God, we've got so more coming.
16:05Hit the subscribe button here on 442.
16:07We had an unbelievable month for that last month as well.
16:09So genuinely from the bottom of my cold, dead, black heart, thank you so much, everybody.
16:14In the meantime, though, you can grab me on all the socials at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
16:18The 442 socials are in the corner of the video.
16:20I did have a brand new issue of the magazine to show you all today,
16:23but I went and left that at home like an idiot.
16:25So look forward to it in the rest of the week.
16:27And until next time, they've added about 20 years to me, these England games,
16:33but I should still be alive long enough to talk to you about the quarterfinals.
16:37So till then, bye.