Pulp the souvenir first editions! Re-cork the Prosecco. Reassume the sober Southgate-era frown. Welcome instead to the almost-dawning of the age of Gareth. On a mild, oddly boisterous night England and their temp-to-perm manager came close to pulling off a genuinely startling result at Wembley, leading Spain 2-0 before two late goals stilled the sense of a dawning coronation, with all the giddy uncertainties such a victory here might have brought.
This was still an encouraging match in many ways, if only for the simple pleasure of the occasion. With an hour gone, Mexican waves rolling around this great concrete spaceship, and Southgate’s new assertive England 2-0 up it was tempting to wonder what that unusual feeling was. A lightness. A sense of unencumbered mild positivity.
Wait, that’s it. England were fun here: bright on the ball, purposeful off it and apparently unencumbered by any feelings of doubt, anxiety and existential crisis.
Context is everything of course. England beat the world champions Germany and then Portugal, who went on to be European champions, this year. Both were friendlies, both in the months leading up to the horribly flaccid Euros. Against that they would probably have held against Spain but for the substitutions that disrupted a flickering vision of a nicely simple, stripped down post-Rooney England playing at last to their basic strengths.
Adam Lallana was again England’s best player until he went off, the key component of an aggressive and disciplined front four. Deprived of his increasingly ponderous captain, Southgate did something simple, setting up his England team to play the way the best Premier League teams play right now, pressing and harrying high up the pitch, coiling behind the ball and breaking quickly when Spain had control. There was confirmation here, too, that England have a new No10 and a new, encouragingly workmanlike point of focus. It is a mark of his slight outsider-dom that Lallana had not met Southgate properly until England’s interim manager paid a visit to Liverpool’s training ground shortly before naming the squad.
Lallana did not play in the Premier League until he was 23. It took him 26 caps to score an international goal and yet in the last year he has become, almost imperceptibly, England’s best attacking player, most convincing creative midfielder, the real grown-up in that attacking trio. Here his immaculately-groomed features were captured in full page Stalinist close-up on the cover of the match programme.
It was Lallana who produced England’s outstanding moment with nine minutes gone, conjuring a sublime piece of creative play from the right flank. Jesse Lingard won the ball by the touchline and fed Lallana. His turn was instant, the low curling pass around Iñigo Martínez a thing of beauty. Jamie Vardy took the ball around Pepe Reina and was tripped. Lallana took the penalty, burying it easily for his third goal in three games. Lallana was the best player on the pitch in those opening minutes, scarcely misplacing a touch and constantly dragging Spain’s midfield out of position, with that unusual ability to take possession on the half-turn and swivel into space.
Lallana is a rare bird in other ways, a role model for modern English players, who may well find themselves emerging at lower levels or taking a step back to go forward. Five years ago Sergio Busquets and Thiago Alcântara, Spain’s central midfield here, won the Champions League with Barcelona on this ground. At the same time Lallana was playing for Southampton in League One. England’s other scorer, Vardy, was in the Northern Premier League with FC Halifax Town.
What stands out with Lallana is his willingness to learn. In the last year he has become a Kloppist convert, buying in completely to the synchronised attacking blitz. Lallana even managed to get the lovely little passing sprite Thiago to foul him, which as it happened was the end of his match. Watching Lallana limp off the field half an hour into a meaningless friendly you feared slightly for Jürgen Klopp’s plasma screen.
Sorry about that Jürgen. But thanks for the pointers. For now the Klopp-Pochettino high energy style is a clear way forward for Southgate. Before this game so much of the talk had been about England’s “identity”. What a curse it is to have to have one! Famously the poet Philip Larkin refused to take part in the literary-celebrity circuit because he couldn’t face “going around pretending to be me”. Such has been the burden of successive England teams, oppressed by their own invisible shadow. Here they come again. Pretending to be themselves.
This, though, was all very natural while it lasted, a simple plan based around learned and comfortable movements.
For a while Spain were surprised to find a friendly transformed into an old style niggle‑fest, with England’s pacy little tyros blocking and baulking and leaving a foot in. With Lallana off the pitch it was Raheem Sterling who became England’s most concentrated threat. It was his nice little dart and pass inside that led to the second goal, Vardy producing a Nat Lofthouse‑style charging header from Jordan Henderson’s looping cross.
Spain woke up and fought back with great spirit, Isco equalising with a deft finish five minutes into injury time. This was a fun, frantic match, one that pointed in its own rather madcap way towards something new: if not quite a bold new frontier, then a quietly promising idea of what Southgate’s England may strive to become.
