HEAVEN HELP THE team in need of a hero?
England have entered their era of Judedependcia, but Bellingham’s astonishingly broad brilliance may not be enough to save them across the next month.
This narrow win over an unimpressive Serbia was plainly not the stuff of champions: Bellingham scored after 13 minutes and England then stopped playing, their vulnerability growing with Bellingham’s diminishing energy.
England are no longer a functional team: they are instead a collection of a few world class individuals with a shaky defence, a non-existent left-side and a flighty midfield that are corralled into coherence by Bellingham.
Gareth Southgate has spent years as England’s last technocrat, methodically building culture and consensus, but now he has arrived in his endgame with England once again in thrall to a single, charismatic leader.
On the basis of this, however, it will not be enough to triumph over the superior collectives of Germany and France.
Bellingham started here as a classic number 10, stationed between Saka and Foden and behind Kane; free to roam between the lines of Serbia’s defence and, really, to wherever else he might be interested. For England’s sake, it is a good thing there isn’t really much to see around Gelsenkirchen. By the time they play Slovenia in Cologne, mind, they’d better check to make sure Bellingham doesn’t nip out to check out the cathedral.
There’s an old Vincente Bosque quote about Sergio Busquets: if you watch the game, you don’t see Busquets, but if you watch Busquets, you see the whole game. You can apply the latter half of that to Bellingham, because if you watch him you’ll also see the whole game. He can’t help imposing himself on it; he expands to occupy it like water flowing into a crater.
Tonight, Matthew, Jude said he would assume the figure of a Gundogan-Lampard-Kante hybrid.
He took passes between the lines, knitted play and recycled possession as well as Gundogan did for Germany on Friday night, unafraid too to dart in behind at times to further scramble Serbia’s brains. Bellingham dropped off so well that it made Harry Kane virtually obsolete. England’s players completed 384 touches in the first half, and Kane contributed all of two of them.
Bellingham then assumed his goalscoring mantle, timing a deep run immaculately to crash the box and meet Saka’s deflected cross with a diving header to give England a lead they richly deserved.
To that point England had dominated a bafflingly passive Serbia – it took them until the sixth minute to complete their first pass – but after Bellingham’s goal, they surrendered the initiative.
Bellingham then switched into his lung-bursting Kante impression, scurrying around quenching fires. At one point an England counter broke down, and with Trent Alexander-Arnold caught ahead of the ball and either unable or disinterested in getting back, Bellingham sprinted to get goal-side of Filip Kostic, accosting him for long enough to end the attack. Bellingham then conducted the crowd and bumped Kostic defiantly in the chest.
England’s problems became profound, however, as Bellingham got tired. To say England needed half-time is to admit that Bellingham needed it. Nemanja Gudelj skipped by him too easily just before the half, his first obvious sign of fatigue. Bellingham left for the dressing room amping up the crowd, perhaps in subliminal message to himself.
He continued to make a series of impressive recovery tackles after the break but became more peripheral as the game wore on, withdrawn with five minutes of normal time remaining.
But even he could not save England’s reverting to type. This game became eerily reminiscent of England’s most recent Euros game: score early, slowly stop playing football, and end up hoofing the ball long to nobody in particular. This marred England’s second-half: Alexander-Arnold’s shot from outside the box just shy of the hour mark was England’s first effort of any kind in over 25 minutes of play.
Their total lack of midfield control will be held as evidence for the prosecution of one T. Alexander-Arnold, midfielder. There will be some fairness in the questioning. Having Alexander-Arnold in midfield is the equivalent of only being able to throw a series of haymaker body shots, where England needed someone to jab their way through the game. But rather than introduce one in the form of Kobbie Mainoo or Adam Wharton, Southgate instead went for energy in Conor Gallagher.
That’s not to say Alexander-Arnold should lose his place in the team: judging by how Kyle Walker defended tonight, he should find himself returned to right-back.
Harry Kane was unfortunate to see a second-half header tipped onto the crossbar but in truth England did nothing after Bellingham’s goal to win it. Serbia’s lack of quality and composure meant their abdication of the second half went unpunished.
England’s lack of midfield control is a profound worry in a team already queasy with them. The Stones/Guehi defensive partnership looked shaky at times, while they cannot win the tournament without Luke Shaw’s returning to fitness.
Tonight England were saved by Bellingham, but this may not be a strategy viable all the way to the final.
The fact tonight’s game was played in a stadium built above a disused coal mine should be a warning to England of the dangers of too often mining an exhaustible resource.
