England's lion's share of possession a detriment to development

One of the problems the Champions League has is that the gulf in class between the best and the worst is so great. Unless the draw is cruel, a Bayern Munich or a Barcelona sweeps through the autumn, barely extending itself before they get to the quarter-final in spring, when they find themselves playing a wholly different sort of game against a side of roughly their level. International football can feel much the same, and not just for the very elite but also for moderately good sides like England. 

In the build-up to the Euros, Roy Hodgson said again and again that England would be seen at their best only when they played a team who attacked them so they could counter-attack. He was almost certainly right: the likes of Danny Welbeck, Raheem Sterling and Daniel Sturridge are quick. The last time a team did attack England in a competitive fixture was Switzerland in the second half of the first Euro qualifier in Basel in September 2014. England picked them off on the break and won 2-0. After that it became a case of England hurling themselves on massed defensive ranks, which they did with reasonable competence in the qualifiers and rather less in the finals.

The World Cup qualifiers have begun in much the same vein. That’s not to condemn Slovakia or Malta for trying to defend: it’s both their right and their obligation if that’s how they feel they have the best chance of getting a positive result. But it has nothing to do with the final stages of a tournament.

This is the curse of the international manager: England could win every qualifier 2-0 from now until the World Cup. They could get through the group and the last 16 by winning every game 2-0. And then they draw 0-0 against, say, Italy in the quarter-final and lose on penalties and it’s suddenly a disaster and the manager is a buffoon. Or England could scrape through to Russia via a play-off. They could lose a group game, draw another and squeeze through to the last 16 on goal-difference. They could edge by, say, Paraguay with an offside winner in the 90th minute in the last 16, draw 0-0 with Italy in the quarter-final and win on penalties and suddenly the manager would be a genius.

International football is almost entirely about getting results when they matter, as Portugal proved in the summer. It’s worth sometimes, when railing against the failings of England and revelling in the memory of Italia 90, asking yourself how many games they won in 90 minutes in that World Cup. The answer is one: a scrappy 1-0 over Egypt with a Mark Wright header from a free-kick. Unless you’re Spain, who were for a while indisputably the best side in the world, international football is rarely about sustained form: if it were, Fabio Capello, who has the best win percentage of any England manager to have been in charge for more than one game, would be revered, rather than being remembered as the orchestrator of the drabness in South Africa.

Saturday’s game against Malta highlighted the problem. England had 79.8% possession. That’s not really football: that’s a training exercise of attack against defence. Malta had one shot to England’s 20. In Slovakia, England had had 20 chances to 1. Against Iceland at the Euros it had been 18 to 8. Against Slovakia at the Euros 29 to 4. Against Wales at the Euros it was 20 to 8. Against Russia at the Euros it was 15 to 6. Of course it’s England’s responsibility to win those games, to take their chances and make sure they don’t leak silly goals, but the last two qualifiers have felt like pummelling a punch-bag rather than a fair fight.

Malta perhaps enjoyed their day at Wembley, but did their football really benefit from that? Would they not be better off playing teams closer in ability so they could practise attack as well as defence? Certainly England would be better served by playing teams who tested them in more than one aspect of the game.

But worst of all, it’s boring. It’s barely even football. Little wonder international breaks are so often greeted with a rolling of the eyes and a desire to get back to the cut and thrust of league football.

What did you make of England's 2-0 win over Malta on Saturday? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below