Just the bogey team or code red: how worried should England be after Iceland defeat?

Of all the teams to fester in England’s collective memory for all the wrong reasons, Iceland probably wouldn’t be the first guess. But here we are again: the tiny Nordic nation have beaten a relatively uninventive England team in a result no one expected, and it feels like 2016 all over again. 

Just as a refresher: Iceland have a population just short of 400,000. Their best player just fell to relegation with Burnley and their previous result was a 2-1 loss to Ukraine. You’d like to think England are probably better than Ukraine, right? 

So, how worried should we be? Is this an indication that the Three Lions may be further off the pace than we all thought, or is this just a bump in the road against the team who have made an annoying habit of being the most unlikely thorn in the nation’s side?

Well, it doesn’t look great on paper. England have a history of underwhelming in friendlies prior to tournaments – you may remember a pair of rancid draws to Ecuador and Honduras just before the catastrophe that was the 2014 World Cup – but they haven’t lost their last match before a tournament since defeat to West Germany in 1968. 

1968 was so long ago that the European Championships consisted of only four teams, and two of them were Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Neither of those currently exist – and if you’re wondering, England finished third. 

Stats like that don’t exactly serve as confidence boosters, but friendly football isn’t the same as tournament football. 

There were some positives from last night’s defeat, too. England maintained 68% possession and took 13 shots, 11 of which came from inside the box. The squad was also fairly rotated, and after his introduction in the 64th minute, Trent Alexander-Arnold created more chances than anyone else on the pitch manged in the entire game. So, who knows what would’ve happened if he’d started?

The long and short of it, though, is that you don’t win football matches by creating unfinished chances and keeping the ball for two-thirds of the match; you win football matches by scoring goals, which Iceland did, and England did not. 

In terms of form, it is definitely a concerning result. Games like this exist to serve as confidence boosters and a chance to get into the rhythm of playing international football again. Yesterday, though, and even in the 3-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina last week, England didn’t exactly look too cohesive – they certainly didn’t against Brazil and Belgium earlier this year, either.

But that might not matter. Gareth Southgate’s tenure as manager has generally consisted of the team getting results without necessarily playing gorgeous football. This isn’t Vincete del Bosque’s Spain or Luiz Felipe Scolari’s Brazil. Under Southgate, results are king: and that’s not necessarily a bad thing after three largely successful tournaments. 

Whether he’s the man to unlock the potential of these players is a different question all together. There’s no reason why England can’t, with the tools at their disposal, play attractive football and get results, but after seven years of Gareth Southgate, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise if that’s not how things pan out. And, with their first game at EURO2024 coming in only eight days, it’s far too late to worry about the fine line between style and substance now. 

There’s no denying that the football being played by the English national team isn’t exactly a spectacle and there are legitimate causes for concern. England should not be losing to Iceland under any circumstances: it lost Roy Hodgson his job. Of course, that was a knockout tie and this was just a friendly – but again, it is definitely a worry.

But Gareth Southgate isn’t Roy Hodgson, and the current crop of players is a relatively new one with a huge amount of talent. It may take another week for players to gel together properly and turn missed chances into goals. If that happens, no one will remember a friendly defeat before the tournament. For now, though, what will happen over the next few weeks is anyone’s guess, and credit where credit’s due: England always keep us guessing.