Gareth Southgate has been overly loyal to Harry Maguire with the England manager needing to weed out a player that is becoming a problem for the team
Gareth Southgate has been overly loyal to a ponderous player that has become a major issue for his team and needs to be weeded outMost of the focus, post match, was on the hug. And in fairness, the hug was pretty funny.
Harry-ball, then. Six times in the opening 90 seconds in Wroclaw Maguire took the ball as England’s deepest player, and not just a little bit deeper but several yards behind the rest of the defensive line. The seventh time, having crept a little further upfield, he instantly fed the ball back to Guéhi behind him, always seeking that nothing space of dead defensive possession.
Maguire and Guéhi made 135 largely risk-free passes in the opening 38 minutes, completing 130 of them, as England idled around harmlessly in dead spaces. Possession football has always carried an idea of resting on the ball but this is simply too much, too much entropy, the kind of possession that lulls your own team to sleep.
The second problem is the space Maguire opens up in his own team by standing so deep. This can be a very small thing, tiny margins of momentum, angles of passing. But any loss of intensity gives an opponent angles to pass, dilutes England’s ability to counterpress high up the field, and leaves the midfielders looking oddly frantic, asked to cover too much ground.