Purveyors of monster riffola such as Pantera, Mastodon and Anthrax ensured that most of the capacity crowd lucky enough to have tickets for the previous occasion Villa Park threw open its doors to outsiders left with their ears bleeding. But on Saturday, those fans unfortunate enough to sit through the first England men’s international staged at the ground since 2005 were left with metaphorical blood pouring from their eyes. While England got the job done against Andorra, Saturday’s match made for grim viewing and for all the home side’s efforts to prance, tippy-tap and triangle their way through the massed hordes of the Andorra defence, it did not go unnoticed that both of England’s goals came from the more Jurassic era approach of unceremoniously hoofing crosses into the opposition box. “The last one was more classic than the first one,” honked Thomas Tuchel of two goals that are unlikely to cross the radar of this year’s Puskás Award jury. “The last one was from the sideline, with the right foot to the second post and our No 10 arrived – Declan. I tell you the long throw-in is back, as well.”
Considering he was handed the England gig due in no small part to his obsessive attention to detail and tactical acumen, we can only wonder what the German’s employers in FA HQ will make of hearing their manager espouse the positives of getting the ball launched and putting it in the mixer, before enquiring if Liam Delap has inherited his old man’s remarkable ability to catapult a football farther and straighter with his hands than most players can kick it with their feet. “Once we arrive at the World Cup, all these things matter so we will also talk about long throw-ins, we will talk about long kicks from the goalkeeper and not only playing short,” Tuchel added. “We cannot put everything into four days of training but these things will matter. Let’s see. I need to reflect with my assistant coaches. All these patterns are back and crosses are back, as well.” Can we not knock it, as one of his predecessors famously asked, albeit during a qualification campaign so dismal it led to England missing out on the last World Cup held in the USA USA USA, and the late Graham Taylor losing his job.
Of course, while resorting to such a direct and agricultural approach might leave purists reaching for the smelling salts, there were no shortage of Pulis-era Stoke City tribute acts on show over the weekend. Mere seconds after coming on as a substitute for Scotland in their scoreless draw with Denmark, Max Johnston narrowly avoided a red card for handling the ball after it had plummeted from the clouds over Copenhagen with snow on it following a monster Kasper Schmeichel kick-out. In Cologne, Julian Nagelsmann put Northern Ireland’s extremely spirited performance in defeat against Germany last night down to nothing more than an over-reliance on Getting It Launched. “It’s not brilliant to watch, this way of soccer, but it’s effective and it’s not that easy to defend it,” he sniffed, after Michael O’Neill’s side had given his out-of-sorts Mannschaft a right old scare.
Meanwhile in Dublin, Icelandic dentist Heimir Hallgrímsson sought to overcome his Ireland side’s diabolical start to their match against Hungary by instructing his players to abandon all pretence at playing anything resembling fancy stuff in favour of trebucheting deliveries of questionable quality into the opposition box. From a combined total of almost 50 corners, free-kicks, crosses and long throws, the Republic managed to overcome their early two-goal deficit and might even have won against the 10-man Magyars, on the back of a performance that could scarcely have been more Jack Charlton if it had been wearing a tweed cap and standing waist-deep in waders fishing the River Tyne. Given Wales’ winner in Kazakhstan also originated from the home side’s failure to clear a free-kick lofted into their penalty area, the only conclusion to draw is that while the future for the home countries might not be bright, it is resolutely overhead.
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Louis van Gaal and Wayne Rooney, possibly discussing fertility matters back in 2015. Photograph: Peter Powell/EPA
