To listen to Declan Rice in the countdown to England’s final Group C tie against Slovenia on Tuesday night was to be stirred, inspired. The way that the midfielder told it, the team will be markedly different to what we have seen so far at Euro 2024.
There will be greater freedom of spirit, more energy, a determined front-foot approach that will feature a new pressing style. Rice, recently installed as one of the squad’s four leadership group members, hit all the right notes, the exuberance and positivity of his personality shining through.
There was a moment when he reminded every player of why they were here, fighting to do the country proud, resisting the weight of the badge. Because they are the best and they can handle it. “We want to show we can be the team that people want us to be,” Rice said.
The words were great and now the question is plain. Can they be backed up on the pitch? And, really, it is a question for Gareth Southgate, the question for the manager, as he works to reshape the narrative after the 1-1 draw against Denmark last Thursday.
The result was fine, taking England to four points after the 1-0 victory over Serbia in the opener, their group-winning destiny in their hands. The performance was not and it has led to meltdown, pundits such as Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer beautifully articulating the problems, cowardly journalists left awestruck by their honesty, their bravery; unable to do anything other than fall into line behind them.
Individual players have come in for heavy criticism, starting with the captain, Harry Kane, and taking in Trent Alexander-Arnold, who Southgate is expected to remove from the midfield furnace, replacing him with Conor Gallagher.
It is Southgate who has felt it the most. Speak to any England fan out here and the same lines recur. Southgate must locate the mythic handbrake, rip it off, hurl it out of the window and put his foot down. Hard. There is no speed limit on the Autobahn. So come on, Gareth. Feel the wind in your hair!
How realistic are profound changes? Southgate spent last Friday buried in thought, bouncing ideas off his assistant, Steve Holland, preparing for the sessions and meetings as the players enjoyed some downtime with their families. There was no day off for Southgate and his staff. And there have since been only three for him to go again with the squad.
Southgate called it a reset and it had to have majored on the psychologicals, on tactical tweaks and refinements because it feels as though the physical levels of some of the players, which he has been so worried about, are what they are. As Kane said on Sunday, there is “not a lot of time between games and we can’t be pushing training for two hours and going again and again”.
Rice was bullish about the stamina of the team, starting with his own – and this from someone about to play his 123rd game for club and country in two seasons. “We are built to play these types of seasons,” Rice said. “Because we are sitting in a low block people automatically assume we are tired and leggy and not fit enough. If we’re not fit enough to compete for 90 minutes, we shouldn’t be footballers. It’s ridiculous. Let them keep questioning it.”
Southgate, who had raised the initial question, was more measured, which was pretty much the tone of his briefing. He simply pointed out that players such as Marc Guéhi, Kieran Trippier and Kane, who had not had many full matches in their legs before the tournament, were “definitely making progress” and “will be in a better place”.
Rice’s comments about the regeared pressing system were the most eye-catching; they came after how uncoordinated and confused England had been in this area against Denmark. “You’ll see an England team that will have a different pressing style that we’ve been working on,” Rice said. “You’ll see a team that wants to be on the front foot and wants to press Slovenia high up the pitch.
“My game is being on the front foot, anticipating passes. I hate having to be stuck in one position and that is why, in the last game, I was really frustrated with myself because I couldn’t get up to their midfield players. With my season at Arsenal, I’ve been constantly wanting to be on the front foot; win balls higher up the pitch. That’s the mindset of the [England] team as well and I think we’ll see that in the way we are going to approach the game, the way we are going to go for it.”
A point to reinforce. It was only after the Denmark tie that Southgate said his players lacked the physical condition to press as high up the pitch as they had done during the qualifiers. Are they going to flick a switch against Slovenia?
Rice wanted to stress that one good game could change everything and, with a last-16 game in view, the team ought to embrace a certain liberation – “going out there free, in a way,” as he put it.
“Express yourself and have that performance where you can make an impact,” Rice said. “You see the lads in training that are expected to win the games for us and they look frightening; they are on it, scoring goals and playing with confidence.”
Southgate was in no mood to thump any tubs. He cautioned that Slovenia “don’t concede many goals” and probably the biggest takeaway came when it was put to him that people tended to want four or five changes after a disappointing result.
“The big risk is you have a knee-jerk reaction and you move away from things that are going well,” Southgate said. “You can rip everything up and go in a completely different direction but what’s actually going well? We don’t want to lose what’s going well. Then it’s: ‘OK, how can we add to what we’re doing?’
“Your best players are still your best players. We might not have functioned as a team as we would have liked for a large part of the second game and a half of the first game but that doesn’t mean what we’ve been doing for the last two years in particular and the period before that … we shouldn’t be throwing everything out of the window.”
