It's Arrogant and Naive to Expect England to Be Impressive in Qualifying

After the East Berlin uprising of 1953, Bertolt Brecht wrote his poem "The Solution," in which he made the suggestion that the government should dissolve the people and elect another.

Successive England managers must, less ironically, feel something similar. The public and its reaction to the national team—and the media are implicated in this, simultaneously shaping and being shaped by the public's mood—are largely ridiculous.

England did not play particularly well in Trnava, Slovakia, on Sunday. The game was boring. That seemed to make people angry. But what did they expect? Had they not watched Slovakia at Euro 2016? Had they not seen how good they were at sitting deep and killing the game? Did anybody really sit down to watch that game expecting a free-flowing exhibition of end-to-end football?

In the past two years, Slovakia have beaten Spain and Ukraine in qualifiers, Germany in a friendly and Russia at a major tournament. They are not useless, glorified traffic cones to be picked around by the deft feet of English geniuses. They are a decent international side, adept at frustrating opponents, and in Marek Hamsik, they boast a genuine star.

This was, according to the seedings, the hardest game England will face in qualifying. Sam Allardyce’s men were largely frustrated, but they battled gamely away, hit the woodwork, forced the dismissal of an opponent and ultimately won the match.

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With Slovenia only drawing away to Lithuania, there is already breathing space. England can afford a slip-up somewhere and still expect automatic qualification for the World Cup. Even a draw would have been a good result.

It’s true England were helped by the timidity of Slovakia’s approach—and you can only assume Jan Durica’s shameful claims, relayed by Samuel Stevens of The Independent, that Martin Skrtel was the victim of referee bias when the former Liverpool man seemed to spend the entire game looking to be sent off was an attempt to deflect domestic criticism—but still, they dominated the game to the extent they had 20 shots to Slovakia’s 1. They were extremely unlikely to lose.

We’ve seen this before. In the third-to-last qualifying match for the last World Cup, former boss Roy Hodgson had his side shut down in the away game against Ukraine, coming away with a 0-0 draw that meant they would qualify with home wins over Montenegro and Poland, something they achieved with relative comfort.

Hodgson almost bounded into that post-match press-conference in Kiev, delighted at how his tactical plan had worked, only to be met with hostility. Boredom, it seems, prompts bitterness among the public and journalists.

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But international football often is boring; it’s not even as good as ordinary club football. Watch the Premier League or the Champions League on a regular basis, and an international game will almost always feel like a step down. Players simply don’t play or train together for long enough to develop the mutual understanding that brings the complex interchanges of the best clubs. It’s always going to be slower, clunkier and cruder.

The example of Spain, perhaps, has clouded the issue, but their case was exceptional, based on a group of extraordinary players who grew up at the same academy at roughly the same time, the unit fostered by taking youth football seriously (something from which England could definitely learn).

But even Germany, many of whose players operate together at club level, are a clanking, less subtle version of Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund. Look at the players Argentina, France or Belgium have and then at the ordinariness of their outputs as national sides.

International football isn’t very good. For half a century, England haven’t been very good at international football. Yet there endures a bizarre feeling that every time England take to the field, they should produce some dazzling exhibition.

Fabio Capello’s penultimate game as England manager, it’s often forgotten, was a 1-0 win over reigning world and European champions Spain, in which he fielded Phil Jones in midfield. It was grim, attritional stuff, but with a little fortune, it worked. Yet the general reaction was of fury at the negativity of the approach. It's little wonder Capello seemed as sick of England by the end as England was of him.

How did Portugal win the Euros this summer? It certainly wasn’t with gorgeous, flowing football. It was by solidity, mental strength and taking their opportunities when they arose. They improved as the tournament went on, tightening up defensively after a chaotic group stage. But that’s how most tournaments are won.

Few champions play brilliantly in more than one or two games. Germany, in 2014, had the 7-1 against Brazil and won 4-0 against a Portugal reduced to 10 men early on, but they were otherwise essentially dogged. Italy in 2006 and Greece in 2004 won because of defensive resolve. Brazil stayed standing as everybody else collapsed in 2002. France were excellent at Euro 2000 but rode their luck in 1998. Germany were dull but impenetrable in 1996 and Brazil essentially efficient in 1994.

Even England at Italia '90, a tournament performance now revered, won only one game in normal time, and that was 1-0 against Egypt.

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Portugal, it may be noted, lost their opening 2018 World Cup qualifier 2-0 in Switzerland, where England won 2-0 two years ago in what was probably the most impressive display during Hodgson’s time as manager.

There’s a lot of luck in international football. Reputations are made and broken on one or two games. If the draw is relatively kind, as it has been to England this time around, the pattern will be two years of grinding away against teams that set out to defend, followed by, at most, seven games of great intensity packed into a month. Even then, a good start could be erased by a humiliating quarter-final defeat or three or four poor performances elevated by gutsy resilience followed by a penalty-shootout success.

And that’s the other point about the qualifiers. As long as you get through, they don’t matter. The team now may bear little relation to the team in June 2018. England have won 13 qualifiers in a row, but it doesn’t make them any more likely to win the World Cup. Nor would swatting Slovakia 6-0.

This is the phoniest of phoney wars. England were solid, dull and got the job done in Trnava. That’s fine. The box is ticked. Move on. To expend too much mental energy on international qualifiers is pointless; the truth is they just don’t really matter. To demand brilliance from them is both arrogant and naive.