Michelle Alozie’s butt is fine. We can probably stop talking about Michelle Alozie’s butt now. As the Nigeria defender put it herself, the time has probably come to draw a line under the warm potage of takes and judgments that followed her fleeting brush with notoriety during Monday’s game against England. You might think that a woman with a degree in molecular biology, a job as a researcher into childhood leukaemia and four appearances at the World Cup would be remembered for something other than being Lauren James’s temporary carpet. But that is not yet the world we live in.
Nevertheless, amid all this froth and hoopla there are more pressing matters to discuss. James has been given a two-game ban, which as well as a source of personal anguish constitutes a decision of pivotal importance for Sarina Wiegman. How on earth do you replace the player who in many ways has been the key to your entire tournament?
Exigencies upon exigencies, contingencies upon contingencies, more plans than there are letters in the alphabet to describe them: this has been the mantra of Wiegman’s England, an attention to detail so meticulous that when Wiegman went down with Covid‑19 during last summer’s European Championships it was so much less disruptive for the fact that the squad had war-gamed such a scenario in advance. But the absence of James – to compound the absences of Fran Kirby, Leah Williamson, Beth Mead and, briefly, Keira Walsh – offers an entirely different level of problem-solving. The coach who made only six team changes in her three previous major tournaments (Euro 2017, 2019 World Cup, Euro 2022) has now made six in three games, as well as a formation shift.
The interesting thing was how quickly Wiegman reacted. The instant that Melissa Borjas of Honduras drew the little square with her fingers, Wiegman knew what was coming. Long before the decision had been made, she was off her bench and summoning Rachel Daly and Jess Carter to the touchline to inform them of what was going to happen next. Wiegman gets a slightly unfair reputation for stubbornness, which reared itself again over the lateness of the substitutions in the Nigeria game. But when she makes a decision, she commits to it fully and ruthlessly.
And the complicating factor here is that England actually looked a much better team with 10 players than 11. They were more organised in terms of shape and more committed in the press. Reverting from a back five to a back four allowed Walsh to drop deep from midfield without stepping on anybody’s toes. The introduction of Bethany England and Chloe Kelly gave England outlets on the counterattack. Which raises the interesting dilemma of where Wiegman now puts that 11th player.
The simplest and likeliest solution is that Ella Toone, perhaps the closest thing to a direct replacement in the wide/central hybrid role, comes in for James and England line up in the 3-5-2 that worked so well against China. Toone is a strong dribbler, a quick dribbler, a flair player with a good shot from distance, a scorer of clutch goals. She is a far superior defender to James and has a close understanding with Alessia Russo. But her form of late has been a bit meh.
Then what of Walsh, a player who thrives on control? It is hard to control the centre with the 3-5-2 because so often the midfield is scrambling or tacking wide to cover the spaces behind the wing-backs.
So perhaps then you switch to the back four used against Haiti and Denmark, which would be tough on Daly or Carter, one of whom would miss out. And can you really switch from a back four to a back five and then a back four in the same tournament? At what point does that stop being shrewd adaptation and become fumbling chaos?
For the same reason there is probably little value in the more left-field solutions: dropping Russo back into the No 10 role and putting Daly or England up front, putting Jordan Nobbs in the James role, bringing in Katie Zelem or Laura Coombs and shoving Georgia Stanway further forward. None of this really gets past the central issue here: in terms of her skillset, her ability to take the ball under pressure and carry it at speed, there is pretty much nobody like James in English football. Toone has the technical dribbling and the finishing but not the passing range or the strength; Daly has the strength and the finishing but not the technical dribbling or the passing range; Kirby is probably the closest fit but keeps getting injured.
The searing question is whether you try to cover for James as best you can, or use her absence as an opportunity. England will be a more predictable and less dynamic team without their mercurial No 7, but they will almost certainly be more organised defensively, more balanced, less prone to simply giving the ball to their flair player and letting her get on with it. Which path Wiegman chooses from here will determine, to a large extent, the sort of team she wants England to be.
