Category: Wales

You have to hand it to England, really. Few other nations can score nine goals and qualify top of their group and still provoke a debate about whether they are fit for purpose. In a way, there is a kind of genius to the perpetual dissatisfaction of the English: not so much a tyranny of expectations as a police state of expectations, a fascism of expectations.

But just for argument’s sake, let’s start with the caveats. After all, how much did we actually learn here? For all their vivid noise, Wales have essentially been gristle at this tournament: the ghosts at the edge of the photograph. There was a certain sadness in seeing the great Gareth Bale shuffled away at half‑time in what will almost certainly be his last World Cup, having tiptoed through this game the way he has tiptoed through most of this tournament, like a man going to the bathroom at 4am.

Likewise, to say Declan Rice and Jordan Henderson won the battle in the centre is to damn them with faint praise. A set of dining chairs could have won the midfield battle against Wales. England could simply work the ball around them, safe in the knowledge that Joe Allen and Aaron Ramsey would back off at the first sign of trouble. Good luck trying that against Nampalys Mendy and Pape Gueye in the last 16.

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And yet in this languid slow burn of a performance there were still certain conclusions that could be drawn with clarity. Jude Bellingham is the real thing. The defence still looks pretty confident. Indeed it was Harry Maguire who provided perhaps the warmest moment of a tepid first half: storming out of defence like a guy who’s just heard the first few notes of Hips Don’t Lie on the dancefloor, and shanking a fierce left-foot shot into the desert.

That first half was, let’s be honest, pretty thin. It wasn’t simply slow and laboured, although it was obviously also both those things. At times it was almost comically inept: players making the same run, players running into each other. Everything England tried seemed to congeal in a little fetid no‑man’s land about 45 yards from goal, from where the only options were to play it backwards or try a hopeless dinky cross. Perhaps this was Southgate’s personal homage to Alf Ramsey’s wingless wonders of 1966, only this time with wingers simply running into each other.

The problem here was that everyone seemed to want to play in the same space. Rashford on the left wanted to cut inside on to his stronger foot. Foden on the right wanted to cut inside on to his stronger foot. Henderson likes to drift into the channels. Bellingham also likes to drift into the channels. Harry Kane likes to drop deep to receive. The effect was a kind of footballing Hanger Lane gyratory: a cortege of extremely talented footballers essentially converging on the same spot and rotating very slowly around each other.

Typical Gareth. Boring Gareth. Stubborn Gareth. As the teams disappeared down the tunnel at half-time you could almost feel the heat from the steam of a million middle-aged Englishmen collectively boiling their piss. A bright start had disintegrated into a staid passing circle, which as everyone knows is the wokest of all the shapes. But One Trick Gareth had a second trick up his sleeve. And it didn’t even involve a substitution.

So it was a few minutes into the second half that Foden, now restored to his favoured left flank, slalomed past three Wales players, winning a free-kick that Rashford slotted beautifully into the top corner. Less than two minutes later Rashford, now given the freedom of the right wing, won the ball from Ben Davies, allowing Kane to play Foden in for his first tournament goal.

All of a sudden England were attacking from new angles, different angles, stretching the pitch and so stretching Wales. It’s not a tactic that will work against every opponent in every situation. But in a way, this is the point.

For Southgate now has a quiet dilemma on his hands. Bukayo Saka has had a good tournament; Raheem Sterling is his talisman; Mason Mount his rock. But you try dropping Foden and Rashford after a second half like that. And so whither Bellingham in that clever, chaotic No 10 role? Against stronger opposition England will almost certainly revert to a back three, the wing-backs pushing up, the wide forwards inverted. But Southgate’s timely switch has shown that there are other plans to hand, other ways of winning.

And if England are going to go deep in this tournament, this is probably how they are going to have to do it. They have not enjoyed the luxury of extensive preparation time. They do not have a generational talent such as Kylian Mbappé or Lionel Messi. And so you simply have to keep switching the masks as you go, leave opponents guessing, move the points of attack. A cynic might offer that three games into the tournament Southgate still has no idea of his best team. An optimist might counter that on the contrary, he has several.

“You’re going home in the morning,” came the chorus from the England supporters after Marcus Rashford fired in an early second-half free‑kick and again, a little bit louder, when Phil Foden doubled their advantage 98 seconds later. It was salt into the wound for the bank of Wales fans at the other end – six‑and-a-bit blocks of the Red Wall – for whom a first World Cup finals in 64 years has turned out to be a rather dispiriting and demoralising experience. Was it really worth the wait? Gareth Bale will no doubt ponder the same question in the coming days.

Bale, who appeared to alert medical staff to a hamstring problem with about 10 minutes of the first half to play, was substituted at the break. Three weeks ago, on the day Rob Page announced his squad, the Wales manager conceded that whether Bale could handle three games in quick succession was the million‑dollar question, for which we now have a resounding answer: 256 minutes across eight days was simply too much for a player who has played such little football over the past few years. The painful truth is Bale’s three World Cup appearances comprise three duds. At the final whistle Bale limped on to the pitch, embraced Page and then Gareth Southgate.

Bale had seven forgettable touches and completed one pass in 50 first-half minutes – and that was back towards his own defender about 10 yards from the Wales goal-line. Despite starting in his favoured position on the right flank, Bale again appeared to be running on empty, immobile and somehow, despite all of his past grandeur, reduced to a pawn on a chessboard of kings and queens in a dull first half, in which Kieffer Moore had Wales’s only shot on target. At one point Page quickly fed Bale the ball on halfway. Bale took a long throw in search of Moore, who flicked the ball on in the hope of locating Aaron Ramsey, who would wear the captain’s armband in the second half.

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Page said if Bale returned for the second half he would have been playing at about 70%. Quite what percentage he was operating at in the first half is anyone’s guess, with Page’s hollow insistence Bale “put in a big shift” hard to comprehend.

Things did not improve. But for 38 minutes, believe it or not, Wales were actually only one goal away from reaching the last 16. But then Christian Pulisic scored against Iran and half an hour later Wales’s ludicrously slim hopes of advancing to the knockout stage were in tatters. By the time Ben Davies was forced off through injury approaching the hour, Wales were in a real mess.

Connor Roberts was exposed at left-back, Ethan Ampadu, arguably the best of a bad bunch as far as Wales performances in Qatar go, filling in at right-back. Joe Morrell, hardly a regular for Portsmouth in League One, joined the midfield alongside Joe Allen, who started his first game since September. England, meanwhile, introduced starters from Manchester City, Liverpool and Newcastle.

Bale’s withdrawal brought the arrival of Brennan Johnson and within seconds the 21‑year‑old Nottingham Forest forward provided Wales with a welcome thrust. Finally, there was some intent, even if it came to nothing. Johnson gave Luke Shaw a bump as he set off to race on to a lofted pass and the referee, Slavko Vincic, awarded a free-kick. A few minutes later Johnson’s neat back‑heel flick close to halfway helped the ball on to Ramsey for a lesser-spotted Wales attack.

The Wales centre-back Chris Mepham acknowledged his side would have to take the handbrake off if they were to have any chance of recording a first win against England since 1984, and Page took the decision to switch system, ditching the three-man defence for the first time since September last year.

Page even seemed determined to keep Southgate and the England staff guessing, with Joe Rodon, Davies and Mepham warming up as a back three, while Neco Williams and Daniel James lined up as wing-backs.

To say Wales were suddenly free of all inhibitions here would be pushing it, mind. Davies shifted to left‑back and Ramsey and Bale roamed behind Moore – often nowhere near the striker – but the England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford was a spectator throughout. James, reduced to a 5ft 7in trier, was also totally lost. Before dropping a shot wide of a post in the second half, his main contribution was giving John Stones a whack on the shins.

Wales exit with Bale’s penalty, which salvaged an unlikely draw against the USA, their only goal and after bruising defeats by Iran and England. The Wales fans who made it to all three of their games here must be sick of the sight of the Ahmad bin Ali Stadium.

Where do Wales go from here, and with whom exactly? Page has said his senior players have promised him they will not all retire in one swoop and Bale insists he will stick around for the Euro 2024 campaign. Ramsey, too, will seemingly carry on. A few minutes after the final whistle the 2,500 or so Wales supporters launched into a stirring, a capella version of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, with Bale, Allen and the rest of the squad visibly moved, but that represented one of few moments from Qatar to cherish.

Marcus Rashford kneeled down, closed his eyes and pointed his fingers to the sky. At one of the finest moments of his career, the England forward wanted to pay his respects to a friend he has just lost to cancer. The emotions raged.

Rashford had finally made the breakthrough, lancing the tension that had built during a tepid first half against an ultra-defensive Wales, and it was some way to do so – a fizzing free-kick that veered away from the goalkeeper, Danny Ward, and headed towards the top corner.

England felt the shackles come off. Previously, it had been a slog; a tie when it was possible to fear the worst for them. Now they put Wales to the sword, easing towards victory and a first-placed finish in the group. The reward? A last-16 tie against Senegal on Sunday.

There would be more for Rashford and, really, it was his night. Given his chance in the starting XI for the first time at this World Cup, he scored his second when he tore on to a long ball from the substitute, Kalvin Phillips, before rushing inside another replacement, Connor Roberts, and shooting through the legs of Ward. He simply had too much pace and balance for Roberts.

Before that, Phil Foden – another of Gareth Southgate’s big starting selections – had made it 2-0, getting on the end of a wonderful Harry Kane cross, and there was a lovely moment between Southgate and Rashford in the 75th minute when the latter’s number went up: a warm embrace, wide smiles all round.

It was the first time that British teams had met at a World Cup and the occasion was always going to be heavy on a particular kind of tribalism. Noisy neighbours? It had felt that England considered Wales as such during the build-up and not only because of the notorious Euro 2016 gloating video. “They have additional motivation to play against England – from what they are saying,” Southgate said, pointedly, on Monday. His team would do their talking on the pitch, although they would have to bide their time.

For Rashford, it had not started well. England had craved an early settler because the nerves were jangling at the beginning and they nearly got it when Kane dropped off and Rashford bombed forward; a combination that Southgate wanted to see. Kane’s pass was perfect, Rashford’s run the same and he was one-on-one with Ward. Could Rashford finish? On this occasion, the answer was no. Rashford wanted too long, to take an extra step, maybe to sit Ward down. Ward stood tall and blocked.

Wales knew that only a win would do and a part of the equation for them was to move on from the shattering defeat against Iran – along with the overall feeling that they had not really turned up at these finals. Rob Page had promised that Wales would put on their “big boy pants” and he changed his approach, going with a back four. The wingers, Gareth Bale and Dan James, were under orders to protect the full-backs.

England hogged the ball from the first whistle, trying to work their patterns, to pull Wales out of their shape. But for long spells in the first half, the movements were too slow, the tempo absent. It felt like possession for possession’s sake. There were some crossfield switches but Wales were happy to keep England in front of them. They were able to do so with a measure of comfort.

Wales barely crossed halfway before the interval. The onus was on England. Rashford hammered in a shot that Neco Williams bravely cleared with his head – the Wales defender would be forced off with a suspected concussion – and there was the comedy moment when Harry Maguire advanced and advanced before trying his luck. He shanked the shot out for a throw-in.

England flickered towards the end of the first-half. Jude Bellingham ignited one move with a pair of nice flicks that led to Foden shooting off target. Rashford leapt into a scissor kick from a deflected Jordan Henderson cross only to mis-time the connection. Foden led a break but Rashford’s final ball was poor. There were furrowed brows when the half-time whistle blew.

Bale did not reappear for the second-half; the statistics credited him with seven touches but what could England do? Urgency and penetration had to be the watchwords. Southgate’s team located them.

Foden was the spark. He had been loose in the first-half. Now, switched to the left, he blasted inside, running at the red shirts, a blur of intent to win a free-kick to the left of centre.

Rashford’s conversion was a beauty; the power and placement too much for Ward, although the goalkeeper did appear to be slightly wrong-footed, leaning towards the other corner, perhaps expecting the ball to have gone there.

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Guardian reporting goes far beyond what happens on the pitch. Support our investigative journalism today.

England twisted the knife immediately, Rashford pressing Ben Davies as Wales tried to play out from the back and nicking the ball away from him. It broke to Kane, who took a touch, made his calculations and crossed low to the far post, where Foden had made the run. The finish was straightforward.

Wales went with a whimper, their first World Cup since 1958 the dampest of squibs. Apart from a deflected Kieffer Moore shot that Jordan Pickford kept out, they did not threaten.

Southgate gave minutes off the bench to Trent Alexander-Arnold and Phillips, among others, and his team ought to have had more. Rashford was denied a hat-trick by Ward, who also saved from Bellingham. On the second phase of the move, Foden could not finish. And, at the very end, John Stones somehow lifted high from point-blank range.