Win against Wales is over before it began, yet unbridled expectations are the enemy of any manager in this job
Well, that was something new. On a sleepy, listless night of football-style product, Wales still managed to produce something daring and avant garde in the opening 20 minutes of this 3-0 England friendly win.
It is often said football has reached some kind of end point, that there are no new frontiers. But here Craig Bellamy’s team produced an experiment in un-defending. We are going to deconstruct this thing. Like a postmodern 1990s bangers and mash served on a gastropub house-brick, with no bangers, no mash just a spritz of gravy-absence, we are going to take it apart, to serve up a plate of non-defence. And also, in the same spirit, charge you 50 quid for the pleasure of coming.
It took less than three minutes to reach this bold new frontier. England had a corner on the left. The ball veered to the back post past an arrangement of passive red shirts, was slipped back in without resistance and side-footed into the net by Morgan Rogers, eight Wales players present but also powerfully absent.
They did it again 10 minutes later. Ollie Watkins was given time on the goalline to control the ball, juggle it, speak to his agent, consider the futility of all self-contained competitive matrices, then smash it into the net. On 20 minutes it was 3-0 as Bukayo Saka was presented with a kind of ring of steel, a personal quarantine space, invited to come inside, the way he always comes inside, and spank the ball with a beautifully tender violence into the far top corner.
