Second-game fever gives Thomas Tuchel a new headache

There goes that dream, then – those sweet, sweet vibes. Stick some fresh discourse on the fire. Call Harry Maguire’s mum. England’s stultifying, stunted draw with Ghana induced a maddening sort of boredom, felt like trying to read a book in a language you can’t understand, like a 9am lecture after you fell into bed an hour earlier. Boring football is not necessarily bad football. But this just so happened to be both. 

For all you can blame Carlos Queiroz’s school of defensive sadism, the last time England faced a Queiroz team they beat Iran 6-2 in Qatar, but it turns out 78% is too much possession.

The obvious concern is how much this staid performance resembled Euro 2024, the Southgate death rattle era, how easily players and fans slipped into familiar rhythms and frustrations. England encountering a low block still makes you question how any team has ever managed something so outrageous as scoring a goal before. Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane still mix like lemon juice and an open wound. Anthony Gordon spent that summer as the fabled solution and has now been designated the problem after 180 minutes, but this seems to expose an issue with how wingers are used rather than the wingers themselves. Noni Madueke was also condemned to sprint into space and pass backwards ad infinitum. 

And so the great debates of the last era appear destined to bleed into the next. Thomas Tuchel spoke about the team being “over-cautious”, about making sure “the highs don’t get too high and the lows get not too low”. It bears saying that Phil Foden and Cole Palmer would not have changed anything, regressing back into a world we knew and wrote off. Djed Spence at left-back instantly replicated the Kieran Trippier aberration, making England flatter and more predictable, meaning three of England’s four primary wide players repeatedly cut inside and shrunk the pitch. Spence only ever moved to the left for Tottenham out of desperation, and made zero goal contributions last season for a team that spent nine months dangling its toes into the abyss. At a dull, dim Foxborough, Tuchel screamed at him from the touchline as he had in training two days before, but he was simply being asked to provide things beyond his capabilities, limited by Gordon attempting to occupy the same spaces, fight the same battles.

Full-back is where the arch logic of this squad begins to unspool, Spence seemingly now the alternative to both Reece James and Nico O’Reilly despite bearing little resemblance to either. Beyond that, with Tino Livramento sent home with a calf injury, Tuchel has suggested he considers Jarell Quansah a right-back and Dan Burn an emergency option on the left. This only really matters if one of James or O’Reilly breaks, or if Rice succumbs to long-standing nerve pain in his hamstring, with James among his probable replacements. O’Reilly has been England’s tertiary goal threat so far, his chance on Tuesday following corners headed wide and at Dominik Livakovic against Croatia. Given he scored more open-play league goals last season than Gordon or Noni Madueke - in fact than all eight outfield starters who play in the Premier League - this is a coherent plan, but only makes benching him seem more bizarre.

Spence’s primary contribution to the discourse appeared to be as the only England player not to shake Thomas Partey’s hand before the match. The Ghanaian is charged with seven counts of rape and one of sexual assault against four different women between 2020 and 2022, all of which he denies, and is scheduled to stand trial for next year. The FA reportedly did not give players any guidance on how to interact with him, while Declan Rice sought out his former teammate to hug him post-match. This was his first match of the World Cup after Canada refused to grant him a visa. 

Yet this match’s legacy will be Bellingham making “second game fever” a thing, England having drawn their second matches at the last four major tournaments, all skull-crushingly dull in their own special way. Here’s a new obsession, a new hurdle for these players to construct and then trip themselves over on. What was a coincidence is now a national neurosis. Well done boys, good process. 

Ultimately this match should be little more than an easily forgotten misstep. An ability to deconstruct low blocks might help you escape the group, but is unlikely to be tested in a semi-final. Argentina and Spain have both lost group matches en route to winning two of the past four World Cups. Beat Panama and England will still top their group.

As against Croatia, there was a sense of waste: England did not have a shot on target for 57 minutes and yet still had ample opportunities to win: O’Reilly and Marc Guehi’s headers, the NFL field goal Kane must have dreamed of as a young boy. They also had a clear and obvious chance to lose, Ezri Konsa knee-capping Prince Adu having leapt into the challenge like a labrador into a lake. This was a refereeing error so egregious no-one seems to have even bothered trying to justify it, just filing it under “shit happens” and moving on like the good old days. England should take a similar approach to this game.

Photograph by Tom Weller/DPA/Cover Images