England progress under Roy Hodgson hard to judge one year after Brazil - 7M sport

England progress under Roy Hodgson hard to judge one year after Brazil



Posted Saturday, June 13, 2015 by theguardian.com

England lost to Italy in the World Cup a year ago but easy Euro 2016 qualifiers mean it is difficult to assess their progress since then.

England progress under Roy Hodgson hard to judge one year after Brazil
Joe Hart sees Claudio Marchisio's shot beat him in Manaus. England lost their opening World Cup game to Italy a year ago.

Even now, a year on, it isn’t easy looking back and wondering what it was that suddenly emboldened Roy Hodgson to come up with such a line. In fairness, he wasn’t the first England manager to fall into the trap, and he probably won’t be the last, but this time last year Hodgson was talking in a way we had not heard from him before. “Anyone who thinks we can’t win the World Cup has to be barking up the wrong tree,” he said.

He actually sounded like he meant it and perhaps the Football Association could have it written into the contract of future managers that they ought to avoid, at all times, bold proclamations about winning major tournaments before a ball has even been kicked. Within a week, Wayne Rooney and Joe Hart were issuing public apologies and Steven Gerrard could be found in a windowless room at England’s training headquarters, wearing several days’ worth of stubble and slumped in a plastic chair, looking utterly broken. “Are we going to be lucky?” Gerrard had asked on the eve of England’s opening World Cup game. “Will the small details and referee decisions go our way? Who has that bit of luck?” Not England, as it turned out, and certainly not their captain.

The anniversary falls on Sunday of that 2-1 defeat against Italy in Manaus and it is not entirely easy analysing whether England have improved, as Hodgson and his players often like to say, or whether they have simply been treading water since returning from Brazil.

On the face of it, they have done pretty well. The game in Slovenia will be England’s 10th in the year sans Gerrard and Frank Lampard, and they won the first seven of them before drawing the last two friendlies, against Italy and Republic of Ireland. England are top of their qualifying group for Euro 2016 and the only goal they have conceded came inadvertently off Jordan Henderson. The win in Switzerland last September was one of the better nights of the Hodgson era – a “put-your-pens-down performance”, Gary Neville called it – and there is at least the basis of an argument to support the FA’s decision last summer not to bring in another manager.

Alternatively, the standard of opposition in Group E does leave that lingering suspicion England may simply be locked in the same cycle of ticking off qualifiers, patting themselves on the back and, ultimately, not really getting any closer to the nations who play the more joined-up football. There isn’t a great deal to learn from a qualifying group that features Estonia, San Marino and Lithuania.

The friendlies that are being arranged to provide some serious opposition – France in November, then Spain, Germany and Holland next year – can be short of competitive edge judging by the games in Turin and Dublin and the qualification process has been such a breeze it may not be until after next summer’s tournament in France that we can say for certain what kind of state the team are in. A win in Ljubljana on Sunday, at the 16,000-capacity Stozice Stadium, will not be the right time. Nor will it be when England chalk up the inevitable goalfest against San Marino in their next game.

It has been a cakewalk, as everyone knew it would, but there was an interesting moment at the team’s hotel this week when Jack Wilshere talked about what it was like to play in the Champions League and how the quality abroad was still noticeably higher to him. “It’s not the same level as the Premier League,” he said. “Technically it’s tougher. We played against Barcelona and when we lost the ball I remember thinking: ‘We ain’t getting this back.’ They make four or five 10‑yard passes so quickly.”

The problem is that ultimately catches up with England at international level, too, and there was a slight sense of deja vu when Wilshere then made his case that England were a superior team now than a year ago. “We know each other better. We have adopted a new formation and I think we are getting better and better every game.

“When you lose players like Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard, who have been a big part of the national team for 10 years, there is a bit of pressure there. But I also remember when Germany lost all their big players. They started again with the likes of Özil and Khedira when they were in South Africa, they had a really good World Cup and they were a bit unlucky if we’re honest. Now look at them. That’s the way we want to go.”

Hodgson does appear to have moved away for good from the 4-4-2 system that infamously led to Gary Lineker describing it as “football from the Dark Ages” and there is no doubt a 4-3-3 formation, or occasionally 4-2-3-1, fits more neatly into modern-day football. The Italy game at the World Cup was the night Raheem Sterling was let loose and, however demoralising the result, it is also forgotten sometimes that the team passed the ball as fluently that night as at any other time under Hodgson. Since then, Glen Johnson and Rickie Lambert have been cut free while the newcomers have included Fabian Delph and Nathaniel Clyne. The changes, however, have been only minimal.

Hodgson was so distraught by the events a year ago he spent a large part of July “almost in isolation” in the United States, deliberately choosing locations where he didn’t think there would be reminders. The truth is he will never get the disappointment properly out of his system but he did also make the point after the 0-0 draw in Dublin last weekend that it would have been wrong of him to lose his temper. As he pointed out, it isn’t easy bawling at a group of players who have gone almost a year undefeated.



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