Euro 2024: the final

Spain did the thing. England, well...

As ever, something beat nothing.

Both managers picked the sides we expected to see. Luis de la Fuente was still without Pedri, so Dani Olmo played as the most advanced midfielder instead. The shape was what we’ve seen all tournament. This was Spain and we all knew what they wanted to do.

Gareth Southgate was finally able to pick Luke Shaw, so the Manchester United left back replaced Kieran Trippier. I wouldn’t quite say it was a “surprise”, but Southgate went to a back four in this game after using a three in recent matches. He stuck with the approach we saw in the second half against the Netherlands, with Jude Bellingham coming inside from the left and Phil Foden as the number ten.

As everyone could’ve called before the game, Spain dominated possession. Spain wanted to have the ball and England wanted to play in transition. We also knew exactly what Spain wanted to do with the ball: get it wide. England played a mid block with two fairly compact banks of four when they didn’t have the ball, and were able to frustrate Spain enough in the first half. La Roja did a lot of pretty good passing around the sides without much finding a way through. They took five shots in the first half worth a combined 0.29 xG (per FBRef). Spain were working the ball well, but England did a decent job of protecting their own box. Conversely, England never made great use of their few fast transition situations. It really had to be that, because their set pieces were again poor, and I don’t think this approach works without good set pieces. It was really concerning how few set piece ideas England had in this tournament without Harry Maguire.

Source: Opta Analyst

England solidly executed the plan in the first half. It’s just a bit depressing that this is the plan. This team did not lack for quality. Despite what several people on Twitter told me, it is not English arrogance to say this side is stacked with talent. Even El País, Spain’s newspaper of record, said earlier in the tournament that England had “probably the most gifted squad in Europe”. “The squad is worth one and a half billion euros”, claimed another blatantly biased English voice, Borussia Mönchengladbach and former Germany midfielder Christoph Kramer. England were the favourites among the bookies (and these are global brands, so it’s not about English money tipping the scale) before the tournament started. Anyone claiming this side was obviously short on individual quality is suffering from England derangement syndrome.

So why aren’t they capable of something more ambitious, with and without the ball? I think it’s broadly about players being asked to solve problems they’re not suited to solve, which Southgate could’ve done more to mitigate. Let’s start in midfield. Everyone ridiculed Southgate for saying the team missed Kalvin Phillips, but this system clearly missed a calm passer next to Declan Rice. Of the players tried there, Trent Alexander-Arnold couldn’t get to grips with the positional responsibilities. Conor Gallagher was all run and no pass. Kobbie Mainoo came the closest, but his strengths are playing in transition to move the ball through tight spaces, rather than in possession when the game is in front of him. So why did Southgate build a system relying on a type of player he clearly didn’t have? There were ways to mitigate this. He could’ve had John Stones step up into midfield next to Rice in a more structured way. He could’ve taken someone like Curtis Jones in the squad and asked him to drop deeper than his instincts, the way Spain used Fabián Ruiz. He could’ve found another answer somewhere, but he persisted with square pegs in round holes.

He wanted to have a left sided player come inside while the full back overlaps, but Luke Shaw wasn’t fit and he didn’t bring another player of that profile. In that situation, you have to adapt your plans. You cannot just expect Kieran Trippier to become prime Ashley Cole overnight. I kept going on about just instructing Foden to play as a winger (which he’s done many times for Man City, despite a weird amnesia around that) because it seemed obvious. The fixes were there and they were obvious. With such a poor structure, they could essentially only play in transition.

Since England were so bad in possession, they had to play a more up-and-down game, but that required Harry Kane to run harder than his 30-year-old body allows. Bayern dominate possession almost every week, and he’s been superb as a striker in that system. But England needed someone to run in behind and press without the ball, which isn’t his game these days at all. Almost no tactical accommodations were made for this. It’s all obvious stuff that could’ve been tweaked.

Once we got into the second half, Spain started to cook. They kicked off to restart the game, and then 69 nice seconds later, they had the ball in the net. I’ve used that same Pep Guardiola quote many, many, many times at this point. But it really did open up my brain to a different way of thinking about football. So let’s do it one more time. “In all team sports”, Guardiola said in Pep Confidential, “he secret is to overload one sie of the pitch so that the opponent must tilt its own defence to cope. You overload on one side and draw them in so that they leave the other side weak. And when we’e done all that, we attack and score from the other side.”

And that’s exactly what Spain did for the first goal. Dani Carvajal knocks a nice ball forward for Lamine Yamal, sucking Bellingham, Rice and Shaw towards Spain’s right flank in the process.

As Yamal starts to drift inside on his left foot, he attracts both England centre backs (Stones and Marc Guéhi) towards him in the process. Notice how far the right back, Kyle Walker, is from Nico Williams in the top left corner of the image below.

With so many players sucked towards the other side of the pitch, Walker becomes distracted tracking Dani Olmo’s run and doesn’t even notice Williams is there. By the time Yamal makes the pass, Williams has all the time he needs. Spain overloaded one side, they sucked every white shirt towards that half of the pitch, and then they attacked and scored from the other side. That is juego de posición.

Southgate had to gamble, and he did. He brought on Ollie Watkins for Kane, providing the energy that was lacking upfront, and took a tactical risk in swapping Mainoo for Cole Palmer, who played as the number ten with Bellingham dropping deep. If Spain’s goal came from the collective, then England’s goal was always going to come from an individual doing a thing, since that’s really all they had to offer. Saka plays it to Bellingham who lays it off to Palmer, who takes a shot from range that somehow goes in. I don’t want to be too nasty here because these are all great players, but it really was just “good player does thing” all tournament. A goal to sum up England as much as the opener summed up Spain.

England really just decided to settle and hang on for extra time from there. What else were they supposed to do, play football in a coherent manner? The second goal is a good example of individuals against the collective. We know that Walker is a better full back than Marc Cucurella. They play in the same league and one consistently delivers at a higher standard than the other. And yet, in this moment, Cucurella found himself in a space where he knew exactly where to be and what to do, while Walker was running around playing catch up because he was caught out of position. It’s just the whole tournament. Mikel Oyarzabal plays a smart one-two with Cucurella in all the space Walker should be occupying, and then Oyarzabal is straight through on goal to put it past Jordan Pickford. That’s it, and Spain have won Euro 2024.

I hope my whining about England doesn’t detract from how much I really did love this Spain team. They had the passing and the dynamism that Spain have so rarely shown, even in their best days. De la Fuente has found the formula, now he can continue to develop it over the next two years as some of these players should mature and improve before the World Cup. Of the Spanish sides to win the World Cup in 2010 and the Euros in 2008, 2012 and now 2024, this is my favourite by a distance, even as they’d probably lose to Xavi and co.

As for England, if it wasn’t obvious already, I think it’s time for a change. Southgate has done some really good work and should be remembered fondly. But it’s grown stale. The tactical system is no longer fitting the players at hand. Things need freshening up. If he does leave, I’ll write an article going through the potential alternatives. Matt Law and Jason Burt at the Telegraph suggested the main names being considered are Eddie Howe, Graham Potter, Mauricio Pochettino and Thomas Tuchel. I would pretty firmly take them all over Southgate right now. If it’s Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard then that’s a different story, but it looks like there are higher calibre options out there.

Thanks for everything, Gareth. It’s been wonderful. But it’s time.

---

Thanks so much to everyone who read the newsletter over the course of the Euros. I’m going to be off for the next week or so, but you should hopefully see a guest in the newsletter coming up. After that, we barely get a chance to catch our breath, and it’ll be straight into talking about transfers and the build up to next season. See you all then.