There was never any doubt in Sven-Goran Eriksson’s mind of what
England lost when Steven Gerrard reported unfit for duty in Japan last season. This week the Liverpool midfielder dominated the first half of England’s friendly with Serbia and Montenegro in a fashion that would surely have inspired a better showing against Brazil’s 10 men.
Eriksson was less sure about the value of Joe Cole, which is why the West Ham prodigy was not brought into play when England were up against it in Shizuoka. But by scoring the goal that gave England victory in front of a full house in Leicester, and by demonstrating signs of enhanced maturity, Cole has given England
another sign of promise for the
future.
Gerrard took the absent David Beckham’s place on the right-hand side of the midfield diamond, and was at the heart of virtually everything his team achieved in the opening period.
He also produced, after 34 minutes, one of England’s most satisfying goals of recent years. It had pace, vision, decisiveness, an instinctive awareness of the movement of his colleagues, and a precise finish.
Under their first foreign manager, England have often been criticised for relying on thumping the ball up to Emile Heskey. Eriksson likes to see the ball being moved quickly into the danger areas, a preference which ought to play to the traditional strengths of the English game. But to compete effectively with even mediocre international opposition they also need to be able to move the ball around in midfield, frustrating their opponents with patience and guile just as England have themselves so often been frustrated over the years.
This week was an opportunity for Eriksson’s players to develop their midfield interplay, given that they were faced with opponents whose own traditional strength is in that very area.
Three times in the opening quarter of an hour Gerrard sent long, diagonal balls skimming in from wide on the right, searching for Heskey’s head. When the tactic failed to bear fruit, he had the wit to select other options, coming inside to link particularly well with Frank Lampard.
Weeks away from his 25th birthday, Lampard is starting to look like an
international player. He kept the ball moving with cunningly angled passes, always remembering to make himself available for a quick return ball. He was certainly helped by Eriksson’s choice of formation.
Once again the tight diamond looked infinitely more promising than a flat midfield quartet, with players always available to support one another and less vulnerable to a sudden counter-attack when possession was relinquished.
The proof of the diamond’s effectiveness could be seen after the interval, when Jermaine Jenas, Owen Hargreaves and Cole replaced Paul Scholes, Gerrard and Lampard without any sign of disruption or unease.
Perhaps because he wears rimless spectacles, Eriksson is sometimes suspected of lacking a sense of humour. Nevertheless there are those who will see his decision, after half-time, to bestow the captaincy of England first on Heskey and then on Philip Neville as a joke, rather than the sign of a desire to salute the contribution of England’s two most widely criticised players.
Heskey’s 15 minutes of unaccustomed authority was also, no doubt, a recognition of his return to Leicester, the city where he made his reputation. By replacing all 10 outfield players in the course of the second half, Eriksson risked incurring the wrath of those unsympathetic to his desire to avoid potentially destructive disputes with the managers of the top premiership clubs.
But even they would have to admit that, as happened against Australia, the ambition of the younger players raised the tempo of England’s game and secured the win. And this time their elders had left them a decent platform on which to demonstrate their virtues.
Eriksson will feel that there were plenty of plusses in the game to offset the latest confirmation that Danny Mills is not an international footballer. There was the sight of Wayne Rooney receiving a neat pass from Cole and turning away from Nenad Brnovic with a sleight of foot that left his opponent shaking his head in
bemusement.
There were Cole’s own darting runs, including the one where he secured the decisive free kick. And there was the authority with which he stepped up to curl the ball past Dragan Zilic, sending England off to next week’s rendezvous with Slovakia in a confident frame of mind. —