Jack Grealish waits on the touchline, adjusting his socks, adjusting his shin pads, mentally girding himself for action. There’s a stoppage in play, an England injury, lots of hobbling and prevarication, and so Grealish waits. And waits a little more. By the time he finally enters the field of play, there are 97 minutes on the clock. Here we go! Your time to shine, Jack! Go and win us a World Cup quarter-final!
And in all fairness, Grealish tries his level best. He runs at Hugo Lloris in a forlorn attempt to disrupt his clearance. Runs back. Chases a long flick-on. Loses out in an aerial battle to Adrien Rabiot (a man five inches taller than him). And that’s it. All over. England are out, and Grealish’s quarter-final sums to three minutes, no touches and a kit that barely needs washing.
So, Gareth Southgate, what was the thinking there? Of course the England head coach had far graver and more urgent questions to answer in his post-match press conference than why one of the world’s most prolific creative players – on form – had been given exactly 207 seconds to make an impact. And yet, as we approach Southgate’s fourth major tournament as England manager, it feels like an appropriate moment to analyse one of the more underrated anomalies of his tenure.
This is, after all, an England squad brimming with talent, particularly in attack. Harry Kane, Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Grealish, Marcus Rashford, Cole Palmer, James Maddison, Anthony Gordon, Ivan Toney, Ollie Watkins, Jarrod Bowen. That’s just the front positions, and you can pick only four of them, maximum. Virtually any England XI you could muster leaves a galaxy of world‑class talent on the bench.
In the rarefied atmosphere of an international tournament, where the top teams are evenly matched and the margins could be hair-fine, England’s bench could prove a vital point of difference. And yet in the biggest games Southgate has proven curiously circumspect in this regard. For all his strengths as a figurehead and unifier, a coach who has made playing for England more rewarding and enjoyable than any other in living memory, there remains a legitimate scepticism over how and when Southgate chooses to use his substitutes.
The bare numbers: in 19 major tournament games, only four times have England made the first substitution of the match. The average time of Southgate’s first substitution is the 65th minute, six minutes later than for England’s opponents. In knockout games, with the caveat that extra time is sometimes a possibility, Southgate waits on average until the 71st minute. Only five times has he made a substitution before the hour. Three of those were group games, one a bronze playoff against Belgium, and the other a Euro 2020 quarter-final against Ukraine with England already 3-0 up.
And in the very biggest games, this tendency seems to exaggerate. So against Croatia at the 2018 World Cup, Southgate sticks with his starting XI until the 74th minute, even though the game has been turning against them since much earlier, even though it is clear to any rational observer that England are getting swamped in midfield. Against Italy in the Euro 2020 final, Southgate resists making changes until the 70th minute, long after Italy have wrested control. And in the World Cup quarter-final against France in 2022, England do not make a change until the 79th minute, despite being behind for most of the evening.
There was a similar sense of anticlimax when Southgate made his first changes (disregarding the injured Kyle Walker, who was forced off after 20 minutes) against Brazil on Saturday. With England in need of a reboot and a refresh, Southgate waited until the 67th minute to unleash the triple threat of Joe Gomez, Lewis Dunk and Bowen. Rashford, Maddison, Toney and Kobbie Mainoo were all left stretching and limbering on the touchline. Clearly Southgate had some kind of footballing rationale for perhaps the least inspiring triple substitution in history. But let’s just say it wasn’t immediately apparent.
Eventually, in the 75th minute, Mainoo and Rashford both came on, and both did a decent job, although probably too late to exert a genuine influence on the game. After all, international football is not simply a matter of raw individual ability but of developing synergies and meaningful relationships. If Southgate really is planning on unleashing Rashford and Watkins in tandem at some point this summer – unlikely, but you never know – would it not have been worth giving them more than 15 minutes? If you’re serious about Mainoo as a midfield option, why not give him half an hour? Was it not even remotely worth taking a look at Toney?
These things are, as ever, a balancing act. Southgate has spoken in the past about not wanting to make “changes for the sake of it”, not wanting to disrupt the rhythm of a team that is playing well, not wanting to upset the tactical balance and leaving themselves too open defensively. The memories of Iceland in 2016 – when Roy Hodgson’s England finished the game with a front four of Kane, Rashford, Daniel Sturridge and Jamie Vardy – are still nightmarishly fresh.
Equally, however, these decisions are so often a function of instinct. So often we talk about Southgate’s loyalty in macro terms, but perhaps there is a micro element to it as well: loyalty to the players on the pitch to do the job, loyalty to the process, loyalty to his own strategy. But affecting the game from the bench, and doing so proactively – reading the little shifts and fissures, fixing problems before they arise – has always been one of the fundamental skills of tournament management. It feels a little odd that eight years into his reign, we still don’t know whether Southgate is capable of it.
