Here is what Southgate had to say.
Jonathan Liew on Calvert-Lewin et al.
Another shootout ...
An exciting night for Scotland.
Right then, like the Republic my race is run. I leave you with Paul Doyle’s report on the the Irish heartache. Bye!
The Republic of Ireland’s European qualification campaign reached a painful conclusion as they lost a penalty shootout to Slovakia. Alan Browne had a spot-kick saved by the hosts’ goalkeeper, Marek Rodak, before Matt Doherty struck an effort against the crossbar. Slovakia scored all their penalties to set up a showdown with Northern Ireland. The defeat was all the more agonising for Stephen Kenny because his team had played brightly in the preceding 120 minutes but missed chances to clinch victory.
Much more here:
This is how the Republic of Ireland’s European Championship hopes ended:
Heartache for the #THFC man! 💔
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) October 8, 2020
Matt Doherty steps up but his effort slams against the crossbar!pic.twitter.com/tRpB7258LZ
There was a grand total of one shot on target from the two teams in Glasgow. “Apart from the no shots on target over 120 minutes, and the total lack of creativity, drive, spark, or anything that would make you think this is a team that deserves to be in a major finals, Scotland actually played pretty well,” says Simon McMahon. “We also now have a 100% record in penalty competitions.”
That was intense. The Scotland game in particular seems to have been an absolute trial from first to last, but all’s well that ends well.
YES!! 🏴#EURO2020
— Colin Montgomerie (@montgomeriefdn) October 8, 2020
So it’ll be Northern Ireland against Slovakia on 12 November in their play-off final, and Serbia v Scotland on the same night!
Northern Ireland beat Bosnia-Herzegovina on penalties!
Liam Boyce, one of two players who came off the bench in the 120th minute just for the shootout, scores the decisive spot-kick!
Scotland beat Israel on penalties!
Kenny McLean sends Marciano the wrong way, calmly sidefoots into the back of the net, and Scotland are through!
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Scotland have a penalty to win it. Bosnia need Dzeko to score...
Slovakia beat the Republic of Ireland on penalties!
Doherty’s penalty hits the bar, and it’s all over! Slovakia are through!
Penalty shoot-out
— FAIreland ⚽️🇮🇪 (@FAIreland) October 8, 2020
Slovakia 🇸🇰 | ✅✅✅✅
Ireland 🇮🇪 | ✅✅❌❌
Doherty misses. It's over. Slovakia progress. Gutted for the boys. [4-2]#SVKIRL | #COYBIG
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Less big advantage Northern Ireland! Saville can’t convert! Northern Ireland lead 2-1 after three each!
Bad news for the Republic: Browne’s penalty has been saved!
Further advantage Northern Ireland! Visca hits the bar!
Advantage Northern Ireland! Hajradinovic’s effort is saved!
Everyone else in every other shootout has scored, for now.
Advantage Scotland! Marshall saves from Zahavi!
Scotland very nearly miss their first, which is weak and nowhere near the corner, and the Israeli keeper goes the right way, but somehow lets the ball slide underneath him!
I’m not sure how I’m going to liveblog three simultaneous penalty shootouts. Hamsik has scored Slovakia’s first against the Republic of Ireland, and Pjanic Bosnia-Herzegovina’s first against Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Scotland are all going to have penalty shoot-outs!
Here are Gareth Southgate’s initial thoughts:
I thought the players did very well. It’s so difficult for almost a completely new team together with not a lot of experience around it, and I thought they coped with that very well. It wasn’t fluid at the start, but the longer the game wore on they got more into the game, they solved the tactical problem Wales posed with their pressing, and they finished very strongly.
On Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s England debut:
Excellent. Really, very good. I thought he had excellent presence, his runs are a threat, he presses well, he obviously took his goal well. So I thought he could be really pleased. He’s an all-round centre-forward, and I’ve always liked his general play. It’s the goals he’s getting now that have made him another level of player.
And on Jack Grealish’s first start:
I thought his work with the ball was very good. We know he draws those fouls, he’s comfortable receiving in tight areas. Again, I thought it was a debut that he can be really pleased with.
Here’s David Hytner’s match report from Wembley:
Gareth Southgate needed this. England needed this. And after all the focus on the squad’s misbehaving players, on what Southgate had called the off-field “circus”, how gratifying it was to see a clutch of dream-come-true moments.
There was a debut goal for Dominic Calvert-Lewin, which embossed a fine performance from him, and first England goals for Conor Coady and Danny Ings on the occasions of their second and third caps respectively. Both were beautifully taken. To top it all, there was Jack Grealish, who gave a display of gliding menace.
Much more here:
Ben Davies, the Wales captain, is displeased, particularly with the way the goals were conceded, from poorly-defended crosses.
We started well, we were happy with the way things were going, but the goal was a real sucker punch. They were clinical. As soon as they got into good areas they created better chances than we did. So, yeah, there’s positives to take from this game but we know we have to do some things a lot better. We were missing some of our best players. We came with a young squad, we showed a lot of character early on to get on the ball, to press hard, to really have a go.
This is impressive. Those games in full:
Bulgaria 0-6 England
England 7-0 Montenegro
Kosovo 0-4 England
Iceland 0-1 England
Denmark 0-0 England
England 3-0 Wales
🏴 - @England's last conceded goal was against Czech Republic on 11 Oct 2019. With England's next fixture on 11 Oct 2020 (against Belgium), England can keep a clean sheet for at least a year. England last achieved this in May 1981 - June 1982 (382 days without conceding). #EngWal
— Gracenote Live (@GracenoteLive) October 8, 2020
Conor Coady is the happiest man in Wembley tonight:
I’m still in a bit of shock. The ball was incredible. It comes to my toe, I’ve just got to turn it in. It’ll live with me forever. It’s an incredible night. To score is absolutely amazing. I can’t explain it. To play with these players is incredible. Everything about playing here at Wembley is sensational. Honestly, it’s a night I’ll never, never forget.
Poor Will Vaulks, who was marking Danny Ings as the corner that led to England’s third was taken. I think he’ll be a bit embarrassed when he looks at that again: he runs away from the England striker to be vaguely near the ball when it lands, while not being remotely close to touching it, or Mings, or any other player actually contributing to anything, and Ings is thus completely on his own when the ball goes back to him.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin is chuffed:
Obviously to score on my debut, it’s like a dream. I’ve worked very hard to get here and it felt like a long road, but I’m very pleased to be here and score on my debut. I felt comfortable, the lads have welcomed me, I’ve felt comfortable from the moment I walked in the door. I just went out, and the main objective was to enjoy myself.
Final score: England 3-0 Wales
90+3 mins: And that’s it! A more than satisfactory night for England, and in particular for the three players who scored their first international goals tonight.
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90+2 mins: One more save for Wayne Hnnessey, who stops Ward-Prowse’s 20-yarder and holds it at the second attempt.
90+1 mins: There will be two minutes of stoppage time. “Scotland without a shot on target in 90 minutes at Hampden, and into extra-time for only the second time in their history,” reports Simon McMahon, “the other being in 1961 when Czechoslovakia won 4-2 to qualify for the 1962 World Cup Finals, where of course they made the final. So who will Israel meet next year?”
89 mins: The match has inevitably faded a bit amid all the substitutions, which means the second half hasn’t quite hit the heights of the first. Never mind the match, though, England have scored three very fine goals (so far).
86 mins: Mepham is down now, and the physio is poking at his right knee while the defender winces a bit.
85 mins: Maitland-Niles has space on the left again, but Neco Williams keeps up with him and is on the spot to snaffle the ball when Maitland-Niles slips.
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84 mins: Save! Ings tries to curl the ball into the far post, but the ball takes a slight deflection and it’s probably thanks to that that Hennessey manages to get his fingers to it.
83 mins: Maitland-Niles runs into the area from the left, but dribbles into a thicket of red shirts and can’t keep the ball.
80 mins: Elsewhere, the matches between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland (tied at 1-1), between Slovakia and the Republic of Ireland (0-0) and between Scotland and Israel (0-0) are all going to extra time.
76 mins: And some changes for England: Winks, the excellent Grealish and Saka, who after a bad first touch improved considerably, go off, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, James Ward-Prowse and Harvey Barnes are on.
73 mins: A couple more Wales substitutions: Jonny Williams is replaced by Matthew Smith, and Chris Gunter comes on for Connor Roberts.
70 mins: Save! England break, and work the ball from right to left ending in Saka, whose low shot deflects off Connor Roberts and suddenly becomes a high shot. Hennessey does well to fling out a paw and deflect it away.
66 mins: Now Grealish gets it again, and this time he slides in a low cross which runs two yards from the goalline with nobody on hand to turn it in!
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66 mins: Grealish underhits a pass back to Mount, which is intercepted. Mount wins it back again and gets it back to Grealish, who again tries to find Mount, again underhits it, and it’s again intercepted.
63 mins: It’s a corner from the left, which is headed back across goal by Mings at the back stick, and an unmarked Ings scores with an overhead from six yards!
GOAL! England 3-0 Wales (Ings, 63 mins)
Another set piece, and this time Danny Ings scores with an overhead!
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62 mins: Wales take Ampadu off, and bring Will Vaulks on.
60 mins: A good burst forward from England’s No7, Harry Winks, is ended when Wales’s No7, Dylan Levitt, lunges at him and plants his studs on Winks’ calf.
58 mins: England bring on Mason Mount, Reece James and Tyrone Mings, and take off Calvert-Lewin, Tripper and Gomez. Conor Coady takes over as captain, on the occasion of his second cap.
57 mins: Ampadu gets booked, for, yes, kicking Grealish.
55 mins: Matondo hits the post, but was very marginally offside in the build-up.
55 mins: The free-kick, incidentally, came after Ampadu kicked Grealish.
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GOAL! England 2-0 Wales (Coady, 53 mins)
Another excellent cross and another goal for England! It’s a free-kick on the right that Tripper sends dipping towards the far post, and Coady runs onto it and very calmly volleys it home!
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52 mins: The second half has continued in a very similar vein to the first. Ampadu seems to be kicking Grealish a little bit more than previously, but otherwise.
49 mins: Wales hit a long ball forwards, and Roberts not only wins the header, he manages to run onto his own flick-on and have a shot. Not a good shot, but still.
47 mins: The good news is that Grealish has the ball. The bad news is he’s on his own goalline. “One decent goal following a lovely cross aside, this is terrible isn’t it?” rages Trevor. “Not as an England performance but as a spectacle. I’m struggling to think of a duller half of football, and I was at a West Ham v Charlton draw around 17 years ago which even Sky Sports described as perhaps the worst game ever televised.”
46 mins: Peeeeeep! England get the second half started.
Niall McGinn has equalised for Northern Ireland in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the 53rd minute. And the players are back out at Wembley. Two substitutions to tell you about: Wales have brought Cabango and Levitt on for Rodon and Morrell.
The cross for the goal was just great. Unimprovable. The same can certainly not be said of the game as a whole, sadly. Wales have played decently in general but lack quality in the final third, England have played poorly in general but have plenty of quality in the final third.
Half time: England 1-0 Wales
45+3 mins: That’s all for now. It’s not been great from either side, and England in particular will feel they have underperformed. However, they’re winning, so they might not mind too much.
45+2 mins: Williams crosses from the right, and somehow it hits Roberts flush in the face rather than the forehead.
45+1 mins: There’ll be a couple of minutes of stoppage time.
42 mins: Roberts gets booked for fouling Saka. The Englishman didn’t have the ball quite under control, so Roberts was quite entitled to go for it, but having missed it he landed his studs on Saka’s ankle, which is not so acceptable.
40 mins: Neco Williams, a defender, comes on for the striker Kieffer Moore, and Wales will have to reshuffle a bit here.
39 mins: Kieffer Moore is down again, and it looks like he’ll have to come off.
38 mins: England win a corner, from which Keane eventually re-crosses from the right and Coady brings it down and smashes wide.
36 mins: For a fraction of a second, Wales appear to have gifted the ball to one of three England players lurking just outside their penalty area. But the ball bounces off the Calvert-Lewin, rather than being controlled by him, and they get it back again.
What a moment for @CalvertLewin14! 🙌#threelionspic.twitter.com/f9licIVrv3
— England (@England) October 8, 2020
32 mins: Moore’s knee seems to have come out of that clash worse than Pope’s face, unexpectedly, and he’s now getting a bit of phsyiotherapeutical attention.
30 mins: Chance for Wales! Moore latches onto a long ball and is suddenly clean through on goal, but Pope comes out well to get in his way. Pope gets a knee in the face for his troubles.
28 mins: Mepham nearly makes amends, heading a Wales corner goalwards, but it’s down the middle and Pope catches.
27 mins: Wales will be gutted about that, not just because they’ve dominated the opening exchanges, but also because first Ampadu didn’t do enough to prevent the cross coming in, and then Mepham totally lost Calvert-Lewin and was a complete irrelevance as it was converted.
GOAL! England 1-0 Wales (Calvert-Lewin, 26 mins)
That’s a superb cross from Grealish on the right, and Calvert-Lewin gobbles it up in the middle!
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21 mins: Chance for Wales! Morrell tosses the ball into the area, Saka heads it not very far out and it lands on the foot of Moore, who volleys wide.
19 mins: England look like a team that aren’t really comfortable with, or adequately prepared for, their formation. They often seem to have a back five and a front three, which only leaves them with a midfield two, which and that isn’t really enough.
15 mins: It was Ings who played Calvert-Lewin in, quite nicely too, but he was guilty of admiring his pass for a while, which delayed his arrival in the box. Meanwhile we don’t have a liveblog running on tonight’s other games, so I’ll throw goalflashes involving Scotland or the two Irelands here. I can report that Bosnia-Herzegovina are a goal up against Northern Ireland, Rade Krunic having put them ahead.
13 mins: Calvert-Lewin is played in again, to the right of goal. Hennessey comes out, the England striker dances round him, but is stuck with an unpromising angle so tries to cross when off-balance, and there wasn’t anyone there to turn it in even if it hadn’t gone straight to a defender.
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12 mins: A long ball finds Calvert-Lewin running goalwards, but he can’t quite bring it under control (it was, to be fair, an extraordinarily hard ball to control).
10 mins: Saka’s first significant touch is an absolute stinker: he intercepts Matondo’s pass 10 yards outside England’s area, and then suddenly seems not to know what a ball is or what to do with it, moves his feet for a while in ways that make no sense, and finally the ball bounces off one of them to a red shirt.
7 mins: England win a corner, and Keane wins the header, but it comes off the top of his head and works more as a clearance. Calvert-Lewin was right behind him, with the ball dipping towards his forehead, and will be displeased by this turn of events.
5 mins: The night’s first shot come from Wales, but Roberts’ rather shanks it, and then Coady blocks it, and it bounces away for a corner.
2 mins: Wales kicked off, England quickly got the ball and kept it for the entire first minute, before eventually letting it roll out of play for a Wales throw-in.
1 min: Peeeeeeep! They’re off!
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A brief pause for thought, and for applause, pre-match:
It's been 11 months since we were last at home. Tonight we pay tribute to members of the England family who we've lost in that time – former players and faithful fans alike. pic.twitter.com/6ArpE6f9Tb
— England (@England) October 8, 2020
A couple of excellent stats and facts:
England's starting 11 have made more appearances in the Football League (1010) than the Premier League (928). https://t.co/PYMJIqqFIZ
— Richard Jolly (@RichJolly) October 8, 2020
England are about to play 3 games in 7 days in this country for the 1st time since they faced France, Argentina and Portugal at the 1966 World Cup.
— Bill Edgar (@BillEdgarTimes) October 8, 2020
The ease with which we can hear footballers’ abysmal national-anthem singing is, I think, probably the worst impact of fanless football. The anthems are now mercifully over.
“Do start to get quite emotional and proud of the Yorkshire Pirlo, as Leeds defensive shield Kalvin Phillips is affectionately called,” sniffles Ezra Finkelstein, as the players come out at Wembley. “Sixteen long years of watching other teams in the Premier League and other clubs’ players represent England have finally come to an overdue end this year with Leeds’ promotion and Phillips’ call-ups to England duty. Here’s to many more proud moments.”
Gareth Southgate has a chat. It’s pointed out to him that his entire starting XI has fewer caps than Southgate himself:
I think it’s not ideal for the players, in that you’d like the new caps to go in with more experience around them. But we’ve still got a defence with a lot of league games behind them, so they’re not novices, and with the three games we’ve got it’s the best way to manage the fixtures.
We said before we left the hotel: ‘You’re in because of what you do for your clubs. We’ve put you in positions that we think allow you to recreate those roles and those runs.’ And they’ve got to go and do that. They won’t be perfect, but if mistakes happen it’s how they react and how they respond to that.
“The England warm-up design is so noisy that no one will notice the silence in the stands,” says Peter Oh. “Call it a quiet fashion riot.”
Here’s a snippet of Ryan Giggs’ pre-match thinking:
We’re on a good run, we have momentum. Preparation’s gone well. The players are excited. If you can’t play on stages like this, you’re in the wrong job. The players are excited, I am, it’s going to be tough, we know that, but we’ve got momentum, we’re on a good run and we want to keep that up.
“Hoary old chestnut on the radio: ‘... a chance for Gareth Southgate to learn about his players.’” writes Gary Naylor. “What exactly? For most of my lifetime, England’s problems have been in the knockout stages of tournaments, not in friendlies against teams ranked outside the top 20.”
Well that can only be because generations of managers haven’t learned enough about their players in their friendlies. Gareth better get studying. More seriously, it’s surely a chance for Southgate’s players to learn about each other, though much of that will happen in training, and not in much-changed friendly lineups.
So, what do we think about England’s trainingwear?
It’ll be a fifth full Wales cap for Rabbi Matondo, but his first four were all off the bench and lasted a combined total of 50 minutes. It’s also a fifth cap for rumoured Tottenham target Joe Rodon, though all of his have been starts. There’s much more about Rodon here:
Here are the teams once again, in purely textual form for those who don’t get on with Twitter embeds:
England: Pope, Trippier, Coady, Gomez, Saka, Phillips, Winks, Keane, Grealish, Calvert-Lewin, Ings. Subs: Dean Henderson, Mings, James, Ward-Prowse, Mount, Barnes, Maitland-Niles, Rashford, Alexander-Arnold, Maguire, Rice, Pickford.
Wales: Hennessey, Connor Roberts, Rodon, Ampadu, Ben Davies, Morrell, Mepham, Jonathan Williams, Tyler Roberts, Moore, Matondo. Subs: Ward, Gunter, Neco Williams, Cabango, Levitt, Johnson, Norrington-Davies, Smith, James, Woodburn, Vaulks, Adam Davies.
Referee: Bobby Madden (Scotland).
“Out of interest, does anyone know whether any of tonight’s England team have ever played together before?” asks Barney Norris. “Presumably they must have, but at a glance, it looks like they’ll have needed name badges when they met.” Hmmmm. Presumably at various age-group levels. Harry Winks and Kieran Trippier will have been at Spurs together, and Gomez and Ings at Liverpool. But I think your broad point is fair.
Pre-match reading: Here’s Jonathan Liew on what Gareth Southgate will be hoping to glean over the next week or so:
In football, as in life, timing is everything. It is certainly no fault of Gareth Southgate’s that his England side must now take centre stage with last weekend’s riotously entertaining Premier League still fresh in the memory. Hurrah for international triple-header week, said no one ever; and yet the stakes for these three fixtures at a deserted Wembley – a friendly against Wales on Thursday, followed by Nations League games against Belgium on Sunday and Denmark on Wednesday – are considerable. Not simply for this emerging, amorphous England team, but for Southgate himself.
Continued here:
Pre-match listening: here’s the pod posse on all the latest footballish business:
The teams!
The teams are in: England’s headline news is that Bukayo Saka and Dominic Calvert-Lewin make their debuts, Danny Ings and Jack Grealish make their first starts and Kieran Trippier wears the armband. So an ex-Spurs full-back captains England and a current one captains Wales, in the shape of Ben Davies.
The 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣rd man to captain the #ThreeLions.@trippier2 will lead out the team at @wembleystadium tonight 👏 pic.twitter.com/cKqVRjXIgh
— England (@England) October 8, 2020
Here it is... your #ThreeLions team for our first home game of the year! 👊 pic.twitter.com/56OIfDICmj
— England (@England) October 8, 2020
🏴🏴 CYMRU XI #ENGWAL | #TogetherStronger pic.twitter.com/IfPo8GPhbq
— Wales 🏴 (@Cymru) October 8, 2020
Hello world!
For the 103rd time, England play Wales today. England are looking for a 68th win, and to avoid a 15th defeat. Here’s an uncanny thing: of the previous 102 games 50 have been played in England and 51 in Wales (with one at Euro 2016 in France); England have won 33 games in each country and conceded 45 goals in each country. England have scored 124 goals against Wales in England, and 121 against them in Wales.
Between 1879, when the teams first met, and 1984 the teams played 97 times in just 93 years of relative peacetime (just excluding the two world wars, when they had quite a good excuse for having their minds on other things). These games were part of the fabric of British culture. Since then there have been five matches in 36 years, and British culture is now made of a different fabric.
This is the first friendly between the sides in the lifetime of any of the players. The last was in March 1976, when the Welsh FA celebrated its centenary by inviting the old enemy to play them in Wrexham. But the thing about friendlies is that they’re less important than competitive matches, even ones in the Nations League, which is basically a tournament of halfheartedly giftwrapped friendlies. Wales have matches against the Republic of Ireland on Sunday and Bulgaria next Wednesday; England play Belgium on Sunday and Denmark on Wednesday.
In that 1976 friendly England picked eight debutants, one of whom was playing in the Third Division at the time. A vaguely similar level of experimentation may take place this evening, and word on the street is that Jack Grealish will start for England. “It’s always a big game when we play England but also we’ve got one eye on Sunday,” says Ryan Giggs. “England v Wales always captures the imagination but my priority is the Nations League.” Gareth Southgate, meanwhile, fibbed: “We have one match in my mind and that is Wales. Our focus on this game is the same as any other game.”
Anyway, I really am going on a bit. What I basically meant to say was, hello!
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