It's Still Hard to Tell If This England Squad Is Any Good

The English are meant to be tired of experts – and yet, last night, as their national team played what appeared to be a prestige friendly in front of a World Cup audience, fans in and out of Russia were poring over tournament charts, plotting a way to the final as if they were Scott mapping out his route to the Antarctic.

The theory is that coming second in the group means avoiding a potential quarter-final against Brazil (who are good), and so actually Southgate's men have been clever: instead of beating Belgium, they've lost to Belgium and have ended up with a second round tie against Colombia (rather than Japan) and then a quarter-final against Sweden or Switzerland (should they beat Colombia, which of course they will, because this plan is full-proof).

England may find that dealing with the actual present is more productive than focusing on imagined tomorrows. In Kaliningrad last night, there were no signs that our strong brave boys should take beating Colombia – who have been underwhelming but sometimes devastating – for granted.

There was, too, something oddly joyless about all this technocratic planning – the Belgians did it as well, their fans cheering the yellow cards they received because if the game remained a draw, yellow cards would decide who came first and second – as if the point of the World Cup is to contrive a way of winning it without ever having to play anyone good. At some point, England will have to play someone good. Why not embrace the glory and romance of the competition and just fucking go for it?

In the build-up to the game there was a lot of sanctimonious pronouncing from the punditry class about how it's just "not in our nature not to try". The Alan Shearers and Piers Morgans of the world love this kind of English exceptionalism. Our players don’t dive and they don’t cheat. They are paragons of fair play. England’s best were going to be giving it their best, just as they had at Agincourt, Trafalgar and Waterloo.

On the pitch, neither the England B-team nor the Belgian B-team could quite come to terms with their ambivalence about the game. They didn’t seem convinced by the idea of trying to win it, but they weren’t going to start hammering the ball into their own net either. Everyone looked as though they were playing a six-a-side game in which their team had one extra player. It was a fake news tie for a fake news world. Roland Barthes would have had a field day watching it.

There were more England fans in the ground than there had been in the first two games. Now that the fevered media coverage of military-grade thugs / evil Putin / actual bears has died down and it’s become apparent that everyone is having a pretty great time in Russia, Brits are getting on planes. One of the biggest chants celebrated one of the biggest lads, the man who’s become a meme, Leicester’s Jamie Vardy, the man who’s having a party.

"Vardy's on fire / your defence is terrified," sang the England fans, the words becoming more and more ironic as the game wore on. The striker seemed most afflicted by the game’s hesitant nature. He barely touched the ball. He didn’t even get a yellow card. He didn’t even stare someone out with his hollow sunken eyes. Watching him was like watching a dog being taken to the park the day after it's been neutered. He just seemed to gingerly pad about; worried the area his balls once occupied might get caught on a branch.

With Vardy looking like he’d taken his downers rather than his usual uppers, the lack of needle in the game was obvious. At times it looked like you were watching an elaborately choreographed dance, a performance put on for the cameras. When Marcus Rashford worked a great shooting opportunity for himself in the 48th minute, his miss looked exquisitely crafted.

Appropriately, given the performative nature of this non-game, the moment of the night came when Michy Batshuayi celebrated Belgium’s goal by drop-kicking the ball into the post from point blank range. The ball came back into his face and his Twitter mentions exploded.

There was something appropriate, too, about the identity of Belgium’s goal scorer. Adnan Januzaj is one of the forgotten men of English football. His personal narrative was too strong – scoring against England meant too much to him, it overcame the torpor of the game. And so David Moyes’s boy, who once looked like Manchester United’s future and who England tried to tap up to play for them while ignoring Wilfried Zaha, slammed home the game’s only goal and won himself a little redemption.

In the end, we’re no closer to knowing if this England team is any good. In the Colombian dressing room, they may be using England’s confidence as motivation. There’s often nothing stupider than cleverness. England’s imagined tomorrows may simply add up to nothing more than a second round exit at the hands of a South American team less storied than Brazil.

@oscarrickettnow / @Jake_photo

See more photos of England fans watching the game below: