The England national team was kicked out of the elite

The England national team was kicked out of the elite



The main stage of the Nations League, which this year serves as a warm-up tournament before the World Cup in Qatar, has turned into a disaster for several top teams. The British suffered the most. They were relegated from the top division with only three points in six matches.

On Tuesday, the main stage of the League of Nations of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) ended. This year, this tournament, which is usually built into the selection for top competitions, has a slightly different function. In fact, he is a warm-up before the opening November 20 World Cup in Qatar. And in this sense, the results of the competition in the top division turned out to be quite curious.

Late Tuesday evening Moscow time, the last winner of a ticket to the Final Four of the League of Nations, which will take place in 2023, was determined: only the winners of the quartets get into it. Her fate was determined in the decisive match in group 2 between the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Prior to this, the teams of Croatia, Italy and the Netherlands had booked the right to play in the Final Four.

But much more interesting than such a list is another one - the one that consists of the top teams that crashed in the League of Nations.

That is, not just those who flew past the Final Four, a little behind a roughly the same powerful opponent, but failed in full.

It has three teams. The first is French. The 2018 world champions in Group 1, in fact, did not even compete with the Croatians and Danes who were ahead of them. The second team is German. In group 3, she let ahead not only the reigning European champions, the Italians, who did not qualify for the world championship, and therefore, apparently, were more motivated than the rest, but also quite ordinary Hungarians by elite standards.

And finally, there is a catastrophe that is very loud. In the quartet in which the Germans fought, they still beat one opponent. And that rival was the England team, which, thus, flew into the second division of the League of Nations, despite the fact that before the start of the League of Nations, it was generally difficult to imagine it being there.

At the same time, the English figures, even against the background of the German ones, although they are modest, look simply terrible.

The German national team scored seven points, the outsider of the group - a miserable three points, without winning a single victory and managing to lose twice to the Hungarians. For the second time, in June - at home with a score of 0:4. The British did not suffer such major defeats in their field for almost a century.

The ideal performance of the British in the League of Nations is characterized by the fact that the British press without hesitation recognized the last match of the tournament as the best in her performance. In it, the England team at London's Wembley Stadium got their third point, drawing - 3:3 - with the Germans.

What good did the BBC find in this result, The Guardian and many more media resources, of course.

From the game of the England national team in previous meetings, there was a sense of melancholy, a lack of interesting ideas, expressed, among other things, in the number of goals scored by it against opponents, which, in principle, did not close tightly.

The assets of the British, with their bright names in the attack, included a single ball to the same Germans in an away meeting.

Now there was plenty of goals and liveliness in their game - especially after manager Gareth Southgate released Mason Mount and Bukayo Saku in the middle of the second half. She also had a lot of character. Mount and Saka began to torment the German defenses when the situation of the British was full of hopelessness. They were losing 0-2, having conceded twice after the break. However, the England team has finally demonstrated that it has not yet said goodbye to moral and volitional qualities. Having survived the knockdown, she was even able to take the lead, but did not keep the advantage, allowing Kai Havertz to score "on the flag", a few minutes before the final whistle.

However, it is unlikely that the emphasis on these moments served as an effective sedative for those who sympathize with the English team. They could not mask the problems that had not gone away. And these are too painfully eye-catching problems that tormented the England team throughout the tournament and did not go away in the match with the Germans.

This, of course, is no longer about the attack, albeit late, but earned, but about the defense, which, to put it mildly, is also not flawless. And, let's say, personally about Harry Maguire, whom Gareth Southgate stubbornly puts in the central zone, not paying attention to the fact that experts analyzing the state of the England team have not been shy about talking and writing for a long time about the fact that his form does not correspond at all to the level that implies fight for awards in prestigious tournaments. In the match with the Germans, Maguire, who gave balls to Jamal Musiale and Havertz, "brought" both goals, which created a lead for the guests in the second half. And could "bring" and more. In a word, something, but Southgate will not experience a lack of sharp questions requiring answers and difficult challenges before the World Cup.

Alexey Dospekhov



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