It seems almost like a miracle, although not a good one, that England fielded a team with Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka and Harry Kane in attack and managed to score just four goals in regular time in their first four games of Euro 2024.
These players scored a combined 86 goals in 134 league games in the 2023/24 season, however their overall output is no longer as high as they all now play for Gareth Southgate and wear the Three Lions on their shirts.
England’s group stage draw couldn’t have been kinder, and the group stage results somehow put almost all of Europe’s strongest footballing nations on the same side of the tournament – away from England. And yet they have yet to score multiple goals in 90 minutes.
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But there is also some good news: a bad game does not mean that a team cannot win a major tournament, as long as they do not get eliminated along the way.
“If England carry on and play like they have been, it will be a defeat for the English on Saturday,” said former England right-back Gary Neville on Sky Sports. That’s an easy statement to make. And it’s mostly true. Most of the time.
Poor performances at the start of a World Cup or European Championship anger the experts and cause great concern for the fans. But recent history has shown that the majority of eventual winners of major tournaments fail to overwhelm their opponents along the way.
How many champions win from start to finish?
It is rare for teams to dominate from start to finish at the biggest tournaments. Only three of the 12 European and World Cups this century have won all their group matches, and of those, only Brazil, at the 2002 World Cup, did not need extra time or a penalty shootout to progress.
While there may be differences in style and acceptable performances in the champions’ records, the twelve most important champions of the biggest men’s tournaments of this century (six World Championships, six European Championships) faced the following difficulties on the way to winning these trophies:
– Only three of the twelve, or 25 percent, won all their group matches. The average points after three games was less than 7.
– The average goal difference in the group matches at the World Cup was plus 4. At the Euro it was plus 3. The European champions Portugal 2016 and Greece 2004 had equal goal differences in the group matches. Portugal did not win a single group match, but drew all three games and advanced in third place. Greece finished second in their group after a 1-1-1 draw.
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– Only two of the six world champions scored three or more goals in a group match, the last two not at all.
– Two of the six world champions lost their opening group matches, including defending champions Argentina. Two of the six European champions drew their opening matches.
– In a total of eight knockout matches between the world champions, the winner had to be decided on penalties, with a further six being won in extra time. This means that on average each world champion has drawn more than one knockout match at the end of regular time. Argentina needed two wins on penalties at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to win its first world title in four decades.
Can England win the 2024 European Championship despite a poor performance?
None of this means England will overcome this run of dismal performances. England’s expected goals (xG) for each of their group matches has been 0.87 or worse, and even with an extra half an hour in their round of 16 match against Slovakia it rose to just 1.52. Not only are they not scoring goals, they are failing to create chances either.
However, “teams and tactics evolve during tournaments,” writes English football journalist Henry Winter on his website Substack.
This was true for the United States women’s national team at the 2015 World Cup, when they played through the group stage with a two-man midfield of Carli Lloyd and Lauren Holiday. This formation seemed to stifle Lloyd’s attacking ability, and the United States scored just four goals in the group stage.
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When Holiday was suspended before the quarterfinals due to a yellow card, the team moved young Morgan Brian into defensive midfield and let Lloyd play full-time in attack. She scored five goals in the three remaining games – including a hat trick in the USA’s 5-2 final victory – and was named World Player of the Year.
Southgate has already tinkered with his lineup twice. First, he took Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold out of midfield and put Chelsea’s Conor Gallagher in instead. That was a disaster. England didn’t score at all in their final group game against Slovenia and Gallagher received the lowest rating of his team on FotMob.com.
The next attempt came against Slovakia, with Manchester United’s Kobbie Mainoo replacing Gallagher. He brought more dynamism to the team and was more confident in attack than Alexander-Arnold. But England sacrificed one of the world’s greatest free-kick artists by leaving Alexander-Arnold on the bench.
Southgate has not yet found the ideal England team and the players have not yet found their feet on the pitch. But as long as they are alive, they are alive.
