UEFA Nations League

ENGLAND only have three problems ahead of the World Cup: the defence, the midfield, and the attack.It’s an old joke borrowed from another sport, but Gareth Southgate isn’t laughing as he surveys a side unrecognisable from the Three Lions that achieved so much at the last two major tournaments.
England suffered defeat in their Nations League clash with Italy on Friday nightCredit: Reuters
Giacomo Raspadori put the Three Lions to th sword with a incisive finishCredit: Getty
Gareth Southgate has major headaches ahead of the World CupCredit: Reuters
England have gone from being one of the most prolific teams in Europe to failing to score from open play in five consecutive games.
One goal always looked likely to be enough to beat an England team short on ideas and intensity.
And so it proved as Giacomo Raspadori gave Italy a deserved win on Friday night in Milan.
Southgate said: “We’ve got to be decisive in the final third and we’re not managing that at the moment.
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“That’s a bit of a head scratcher given the quality of the players and the positions they got themselves into.”
But scratching that itch successfully is what Southgate is paid to do.
Why does Raheem Sterling, to take the most high-profile example, look like a pale imitation of the player he is at club level and has long been for England?
Captain Harry Kane seemed set to beat Wayne Rooney’s 53-goal all-time scoring record in time for the World Cup.
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Now you have to wonder whether England will play enough games in Qatar for him to score the four Kane needs to surpass that personal milestone, let alone lead the team to a historic triumph.
Kane said: “When you get to major tournaments, it’s about being clinical, taking one chance when you get it.
“These last four or five games we haven’t done that.
“We’re just not quite, especially from an attacking front, doing the business at the moment.
“It’s disappointing, for sure, but I’m a confident guy. I know the strikers and attacking players here are confident players.”
The problem is, England don’t look confident.
And they have just one more game to sort that out — a Nations League dead rubber against Germany at Wembley tomorrow.
It feels like a lot of the intensity and belief has gone out of Southgate’s England, particularly up front.
And as ever with the Three Lions boss, there is debate about how to balance defensive strength with attacking threat.
Tournament success was built on a strong defence which has crumbled as players like Harry Maguire, Luke Shaw and Ben Chilwell lose their places at club level, while others struggle for fitness or form.
Bukayo Saka found himself playing left wing-back in Milan on Friday night, but Southgate doesn’t seem to have many other solutions beyond the trusty back-three comes good again, rather than finding a way to make a back four work.
The England boss said: “I think the defenders that are playing well are playing in back threes.
Gareth Southgate has kept the faith with the underperforming Harry MaguireCredit: GETTY
“Of course if you don’t win matches people will look at everything and we’re always open minded.
“But I think it [three at the back] gives us the best chance, over the next few months, of depth in those positions where, if we get injuries, we’re not changing the system again and starting from scratch.”
The return of Eric Dier was one positive thing to cling to from Friday. The performance of Jude Bellingham was another.
Relying on a teenager with limited big tournament experience is a risk, but Southgate has little choice.
His options in central midfield were already limited before Kalvin Phillips, fans’ player of the year in the season England reached the Euros final, had surgery on a shoulder that makes him no better than 50/50 to go to Qatar.
Southgate said: “We have a slight lack of depth in the middle of midfield, which is a concern – but I think Jude had an excellent game, which is encouraging.”
It is, but not enough to override all the other issues.
Even England’s set-pieces, such a potent weapon at the 2018 World Cup, aren’t working anymore.
So it feels a lot like Southgate’s side have become the football version of the nation’s cricket team in 1986.
It was famously written: They can’t bat, can’t bowl, and can’t field.
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What happened? Mike Gatting’s side went on to win the Ashes in Australia.
So maybe, just maybe, it will be alright on the night in Qatar.
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IT WAS strange that Gareth Southgate even felt the need to say it.But in the aftermath of a miserable defeat in Italy which confirmed his side’s Nations League relegation, the England boss volunteered the opinion that he is the right man to lead the Three Lions into the World Cup in Qatar.
Gareth Southgate is adamant he remains the right man to lead EnglandCredit: Getty
The Three Lions boss was booed by fans after the dismal defeat in ItalyCredit: Rex
Nobody had even suggested Southgate might quit or be sacked less than two months before the World Cup.
Even the thousands of England supporters who booed him in Milan, and after that 4-0 thumping by Hungary at Molineux in June, aren’t seriously demanding a change of management this close to the tournament – especially when there are no obvious English successors.
But Southgate said: “I think I’m the right person to take the team into the tournament.
“I think it’s more stable that way, without  a doubt.”
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It now feels as though Southgate is at the beginning of the end of his six-year reign. He will head to Frankfurt in a fortnight to attend the draw for the Euro 2024 qualifiers.
But despite his £6million-a-year contract running until that tournament in Germany, it is difficult to imagine him remaining in charge when that qualifying campaign kicks off in March.
After England completed a sequence of five matches without a win — nor a single goal from open play — Southgate sounded like a man in denial.
His claim that his team’s performance in Friday’s 1-0 defeat was ‘a step in the right direction’ was an insult to the intelligence of anyone who watched it — especially the 4,300 paying punters up in the Gods at the San Siro.
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Southgate has made plenty of mentions of how previous England managers have suffered widespread criticism from supporters and the media. But in truth, he hasn’t received nearly as much stick as most predecessors.
He is England’s most successful boss since Sir Alf Ramsey, having led the side to the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup and the final of last year’s Euros.
And despite long-term criticism of his over-cautious approach, supporters have only truly turned on him since the debacle against Hungary — which was England’s heaviest home defeat for nearly a century.
When you consider that Bobby Robson was on the receiving end of ‘In the Name of God, Go!’ headlines, that Graham Taylor was consigned to the vegetable patch and caricatured as a turnip, and that Kevin Keegan quit in a Wembley toilet, Southgate has not had it so bad.
Yet it seems the nation has grown bored of him and that Southgate may be growing tired of the job.
The 52-year-old has not managed a club for 13 years now and is keen to do so.
Walter Winterbottom is the only England manager to have ever taken the side to four major  tournament finals and this will be Southgate’s third. This job, which was never quite the ‘impossible job’, does carry a shelf-life, and the current boss is reaching his.
Not that the FA have any obvious successor to call on now that Graham Potter has hitched up with Chelsea.
Southgate became a national treasure and a style icon in Russia four years ago, a status which he always felt embarrassed about.
And he is adamant that he is not bothered by either personal popularity or antipathy.

Southgate said: “I’ve seen every other England manager have it (unpopularity). So I wasn’t and never have been carried away by praise. I know how the game is and it turns so quickly and you’re judged by results.
“Nobody is going to enjoy being booed by the supporters but I understand the job.
“Football management, whenever you have a difficult run of results, it’s always going to be the manager who deals with that. I’ve got to get on with it.”
Southgate is a results-driven manager who is no longer getting results.
His side have always been over-reliant on the goals of Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling, while their potency from set-pieces has evaporated. But suggestions that the manager is wasting a new ‘golden generation’ are wide of the mark.
England are short of talent in central defence, central midfield and at left-back.
The manager believes, correctly, that England are not good enough to be successful by playing gung-ho football and he is going back to a 3-4-3 formation, which is always met with accusations of over-caution.
Yet we can only hope that his delusional talk of promising performances are not repeated in the dressing room, where some home truths need to be told if England are to avoid an early exit in Qatar.
Southgate claimed: “I don’t think the performance against Italy was far off.
“I know that’s going to get derision because we’re on the back of a run of defeats but the players know in the main the performance was good.
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“I’ll ultimately be judged on the tournament and how we do in the tournaments.
“Would we have preferred a different run of results? Without a doubt. We’d like to be scoring goals freely, we’d like to be winning, but this is a different test and we’ve got to show we’re resilient enough to deal with that.” More

ALESSANDRO DEL PIERO gave gloomy England fans a small moment of comic relief on Friday night when he mistakenly thought Shaun Wright-Phillips was playing for the Three Lions.The Juventus legend, 47, was a pundit for Channel 4 as his home nation of Italy took on Gareth Southgate’s side at the San Siro.
Alessandro Del Piero had fans in stitches with a verbal own goalCredit: Rex
He hailed Shaun Wright-Phillips, whose last cap was in 2010, as England’s best playerCredit: PA:Empics Sport
The night ended in Nations League relegation for the England as Giacomo Raspadori’s 68th-minute strike earned the Azzurri a 1-0 win.
That result piled even more pressure on boss Southgate – but at least fans watching at home had something to smile about courtesy of Del Piero. 
Following the match, the former forward was analysing the performance of the away side in Milan when he named Wright-Phillips – whose last cap for England was in 2010 – as one of their best players.
Del Piero said: “All the time that the England side pressed high very well, they had a couple of close attacks, especially when Wright-Phillips moved the ball.”
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Viewers quickly picked up on his on-air gaffe and quickly took to social media.
One tweeted: “I don’t know what game Del Piero has been watching, but I’m confident he just referred to one of our players as Wright-Phillips!”
Another said: “Del Piero thinks Wright-Phillips is playing what a guy.”
A fellow Channel 4 viewer wrote: “Why does Del Piero think Wright Phillips is playing for England?”
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Another asked: “Did Del Piero just say something about Wright-Phillips??”
To which another replied: “Yes he did, I had to rewind it! Obviously watching a game from 2006.”
Former Manchester City and Chelsea winger Wright-Phillips earned the last of his 36 caps for England at the 2010 World Cup.
He enjoyed a fine career at club level, winning the Premier League and two FA Cups.
Following a second spell at City, he joined QPR in 2011 before heading to the MLS with New York Red Bulls in 2015.
The now 40-year-old then had a brief spell with Phoenix Rising before announcing his retirement in 2017. More