
As the dust settles on a disappointing end to the Euros for England, plenty of ‘experts’ have come to the forefront to diagnose just what England’s problem was in the final against Italy.
One of the most vocal members at this post-mortem has been Gary Neville. The former Manchester United man has, not for the first time, suggested England are missing something in midfield.
At the start of the tournament, he commented that Leeds star Kalvin Phillips and midfield partner Declan Rice weren’t good enough to get the better of rival midfields and perhaps felt vindicated when Italy dominated possession in the final. In fact, the Sky Sports pundit has used England’s final performance as a springboard to again suggest England lack something in midfield that neither Phillips nor Rice can provide.
Talking on the ITV Football podcast, Neville suggested England’s midfield was dominated by their Italian counterparts owing to their inability to control possession in the same way as the likes of Jorginho and Marco Verratti.
He said: “If you look at the centre of our midfield and then you look at Verratti and Jorginho, or De Jong for Holland or Busquests and Pedri for Spain. These are rhythm players, who keep possession, who keep the game moving and connect everything.”
He then compared that kind of player with what Phillips and Rice offer from the centre of the park: “If you look at our midfield options last night – we have Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips, who I think are our best two midfielders at the moment.
“One of them is centre-back like in Rice, even though he was outstanding [against Italy], and Kalvin Phillips is good on the ball but he’s certainly not a Jorginho or Verratti in terms of how they play.”
From there, he went further suggesting England need to develop a midfielder like Jorginho who can control possession from the middle of the field if they’re serious about winning trophies: “If we talk about how we move it forward, how do we now produce a couple of central midfielders who can dominate a midfield in a huge final or semi-final.
“We got dominated by Modric in the semi-final in Russia and got dominated by Jorginho and Verratti.”
