Hatching a Plan for England to Make Bold Statement in Euro 2016 Opener v Russia

With England’s public preparations for Euro 2016 complete, attention is turning firmly to their group B opener with Russia on 11 June.

Three wins from three is a satisfactory return from the mini-tour around the country scheduled by manager Roy Hodgson. However, the last of these, Thursday’s 1-0 win over Portugal at Wembley Stadium, posed the kind of questions few were expecting to be asking at this stage.

These chiefly related to an attack that, while bold on paper, ended up minimising the potential impact of its components. If England are to make a strong opening statement against Russia, they must move back to a setup more conducive to the energy and greater improvisation that has characterised their most impressive recent performances.

Heading into his previous two major tournaments as Three Lions boss, Hodgson has used the final friendly to field what was more or less his starting XI for the first game. Taking the lineup against Portugal as a cue for what may follow, the idea of deploying three of his most renowned forwards evidently appeals.

As it was, the selection of (from left to right) Jamie Vardy, Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane felt less a show of intent and more a compromise that did nobody any favours.

Without the ball, they shaped up as a front three. Their number and discipline maintaining it was sufficient enough to make the Portugal defence think twice about advancing carelessly, but they were not so aggressive as to make Ricardo Carvalho and company uncomfortable.

This shape gave way a little when the wide men, Vardy and Kane, were forced back and substantially so in possession when Rooney increasingly dropped off.

Speaking afterward about this use of “split strikers,” Hodgson made a logical, somewhat convincing case for the system. Per the Guardian’s Dominic Fifield:

If you play with them both through the middle with Rooney central as well you can’t defend the wide areas. There were some moments where you might be right and Kane and Vardy were a little too wide but their job is to split and come together at the right times. If you play with a man in behind them, you have to make sure he has space in which to run.

Perhaps there is scope for the trio establishing a good understanding. This was the players’ first time playing together like this after all. A further week of work in training may iron out the kinks and mean they enter the European Championship as a formidable, excitingly synchronised attacking machine.

The concern in playing like this moving forward is it will negate the individual attributes of Kane and Vardy so much it renders any tactical benefit they hope to gain against Russia as minimal at best.

Hodgson is right in saying a more central-focused front three would see wide areas neglected. This is risky against most teams anyway, but the Russians will look to hit these areas through their own adventurous full-backs (though they will be missing Yuri Zhirkov, scorer of a great …

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