There are matches that tell you something and there are matches that confirm what you already suspected, and England’s 2-0 win over DR Congo at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on Tuesday confirmed that this England team can beat a team ranked 54 places below them, which is useful to know and not quite the information needed to assess whether they can beat Norway and Erling Haaland in the quarter-finals.
England won 2-0. The scoreline is clean. The performance was described by journalists covering it as “professional” and “controlled,” which are the words applied to performances that technically achieve their objective without generating material for praise. Jude Bellingham scored. Harry Kane did not, which the England camp describes as a non-issue and which England fans are tracking with the specific anxiety of a fan base that has watched Kane score 93 goals in 103 appearances for his country and has been told repeatedly not to read into it.
Kane’s right ankle, which was injured in the Mexico match when he went over the advertising boards in the 63rd minute and which Thomas Tuchel described as “really bad,” was described by Tuchel on Tuesday as improving, which is the description an England manager gives about a player’s injury when the player is playing on Thursday. The ankle is improving. Kane is playing Thursday. Whether these are connected is a medical question Tuchel declines to specify.
Norway await in the quarter-finals. Erling Haaland has scored seven goals in four matches at this tournament, including two in Norway’s 3-1 defeat of Brazil in the round of 16, in what is either a terrifying demonstration of peak Haaland form or the kind of statistics that accumulate when a generational striker is playing in the year of his life. England’s centre-backs are Kyle Walker and John Stones. Walker is 36 years old. Haaland is 25. Tuchel has described the Norway match as England’s “biggest test yet,” which is accurate and which understates it.
Tuchel has still not sung God Save The King. The final is July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. England are two wins away. The anthem has not been sung. Joe Hart, who told the BBC that Tuchel “got that wrong” when he blamed the referees after Mexico, is presumably watching closely.
When the manager who hasn’t sung the national anthem is two wins from being required to, and the next opponent has scored seven goals in four matches, what exactly is England preparing for?
Sources
GB News: Thomas Tuchel hits out at referees in England’s victory over Mexico
GB News: Joe Hart criticises Tuchel after England win
GB News: England World Cup quarterfinal preview
