At a time when much of the chatter around England has centred on the existential, Gauloise-puffing idea of identity, essence and (God help us) “footballing DNA”, it seems fitting Spain should be Tuesday night’s friendly opponents at Wembley. The FA’s urge to find a template to follow, embellish and generally crib has circled France, Germany and Spain, with an Iberian tang to elements from B team proposals, elite player performance plan and the idea teams at every level should adopt an already outmoded possession game.
After Friday’s win against Scotland Gareth Southgate even spoke in his post-match press conference about the significance of hosting Julen Lopetegui’s depleted team. “Playing Spain is one of the biggest challenges we can face,” he said. “They have a clear identity of how they play throughout all their age groups.” As pre-match battle cries go it may not be quite up there with Stuart Pearce’s old Wembley routine (“This is our fucking turf, my fucking turf”), but the message is clear enough. Identity, cohesion, that as-yet undefined DNA strand: this has become the new grail, the creaking hobby horse behind every fresh falling-short.
For now there are more pragmatic reasons to welcome a visit from Spain. In the stop-start world of modern international football there can be a slightly congealed quality to the second game of two. A Tuesday night follow-up friendly, 18 months from the nearest tournament, with thoughts already turned to club dates and injury jangles, has more than a little greyness about it.
Not so much this time. Even stripped of both their recent belts and in injury depleted guise, Spain at home is the kind of match-up Roy Hodgson used to call a “prestige friendly”. At times these days Wembley can feel like a slightly enervated grand footballing cathedral, with all the visceral electricity of a slightly irritable Cliff Richard or the opening night of the Ideal Home Show. This has not been helped by a succession of room temperature contests.
England’s last five opponents home and away have been ranked 52nd, 56th, 178th, 28th and 27th in the world. Of the last eight teams to visit Wembley only Holland have scored a goal. By any standards a meeting with the most captivating football nation of the last 10 years is a timely little bump for the basic idea of keeping this weary, musical moth-eaten pageant still drifting along, not least at a time when so many younger fans in particular feel a growing ambivalence towards international football.
Beyond that there are other reasons for England to take this game seriously. Southgate will be desperate for a win to underscore his claim on the permanent job. More broadly there is the general good health of the team to consider, a group so traumatised by the summer’s Euros Southgate has taken to staging confidence-building talk-and-share sessions with his players. Make no mistake, as meaningless, mid-season, non-tournament-year friendlies go, England really could do with winning this one.
And yet part of the fascination of hosting Spain is the fact that in proper competition this is just the kind of game they’ve tended to lose. Since 2002 England’s tournament record against high-quality international teams reads: played nine won none, lost five and drawn four. The last time they won a knockout match against a team who have previously won a serious trophy was – wait for it – the final of the 1966 World Cup.
There is a case to be made that the last time England beat Spain, five years ago at Wembley, is still their high point of the last five years, a disciplined 1-0 win in November 2011 that, friendly or no friendly, came against a wonderful champion team at their peak. Phil Jones and Scott Parker were England’s central midfield that day. Darren Bent gave Sergio Ramos a tough afternoon. Twenty-year-old Jack Rodwell kept Xavi and Andrés Iniesta at bay for the final half hour. The future was if not wide open, then infused with a weak leer of hope.
Since when England have won two of 11 tournament matches played and returned from Kiev, São Paulo and Nice in a state of tearful disarray. Rather than narrowing, the gap to the elite seems to have entrenched, given context and narrative by the preoccupation with methods and systems. In this respect Spain have been England’s most intriguing opponents in recent years, a team whose current strengths, the ability to pass and keep the ball, always seems to bring out the thumbscrews, the rack, the most mournful notes of self-flagellation.
That 1-0 win at Wembley remains the only time England have scored in the last five meetings between these teams. This has been what boxing promoters would call a bad match for England, Spain’s strengths perfectly tailored to highlight their own fears and weaknesses. When these teams last played, a year ago in Alicante, England were overrun completely in one of the most one-sided, delicately sadistic 2-0 thrashings you are ever likely to see. Spain simply kept the ball to themselves that night, with Thiago Alcântara producing a 27-minute masterclass in pass and move that seemed to thoroughly spook Michael Carrick and Fabian Delph (neither has played for England since).
Thiago was also at the heart of the 4-0 defeat of Macedonia on Saturday night, a game that saw Spain keep an astonishing 79% of possession, and which demonstrates once again the pointlessness of trying to import or bastardise another successful style. English football’s muscular, mud-bound hinterlands will never produce a Thiago, a player so fragile his good times are always weighted against the sense of another impending twang or twist, but who is quite simply a joy to watch when he is on the ball, a creature of pure technique.
For all that there are elements of the current team that may just suggest a more convincing performance on Tuesday night. This is a more technically competent England team than some who have passed in recent years. The players are generally happier in possession but also perhaps more in tune with the Premier League vogue of only chasing the ball when the moment is right.
Plus, for all England’s well-documented failings against better teams, there has been a slight change in the dominant weather in the last year. England have adopted a more worrying habit of tripping up not against the best, but against the second best too. Asked to take the dominant role, to dictate tempo and texture they have tended to gulp and stammer. In the last year England have beaten powerfully ranked teams in France, Germany, Portugal and Wales (three of those in pre-tournament friendlies) while losing to Iceland and drawing with Slovenia, Slovakia and Russia. Stretching themselves, counter-punching, raising their own game might just be a tonic, one way of forgetting briefly the onerous task of being, at all times, an England team.
In simpler terms it is probably a good time to play Spain. This an injury-hit squad, with Gerard Piqué, Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets, Iniesta and Diego Costa all out. The 4-0 win against Macedonia was more involving than it looks in outline, with Spain pressing repeatedly before scoring three late goals.
There may just be a greater urgency for England, whose attacking midfield looked well balanced during their 3-0 win against a flaccid Scotland, with Adam Lallana again showing that rare ability to take the ball at speed and Wayne Rooney in his only sensible position.
As November trot-abouts go Spain at Wembley could yet have its elements of fascination, even if the only part England should really be worrying about this time is the need, on so many levels, for a victory.
