Given the experimental selections, exhausted players and empty stadiums bar excitable schoolchildren, England’s end-of-season Nations League games have felt a little like the international friendlies that they were supposed to replace. Case in point: when the final whistle sounded on Saturday’s goalless draw with Italy, not one of Gareth Southgate’s players out on the pitch looked especially disappointed with the result. That was entirely understandable at the end of a long, hard and hectic campaign.
At least this fourth and final outing against Hungary will be the first at home – or Molineux, at least – in front of a full crowd, and the first with a sense of mild peril about it too. Anything less than a win for England and progressing to the Nations League finals this time next year will look extremely difficult. Lose and, ahead of a trip to the San Siro and the visit of Germany to Wembley in September, the prospect of relegation into the competition’s second tier will suddenly feel very real.
