Alex Keble
Wealth can be a dangerous thing. Financial power, like that enjoyed in increasing isolation by the Premier League, inevitably stifles the kind of self-reflection that fuels original thought; it is easy to explain why England’s ever-inflating bank accounts has an inverse relationship with its success in European competition.
Over the last decade tactical creativity has thrived in little pockets of mainland Europe while the Premier League has simply pumped cash into pre-packaged superstars, pillaging the best bits from across the world and wondering why squishing them all together doesn’t automatically create a perfect super-group.
It is, of course, the system that makes the player and not the other way around. The Premier League has suffered because it forgot that tactical sophistication supersedes individual talent and, like everything and everyone else that’s disgustingly rich, it has shown a total disregard for nuance or dedication to making something new.
English football has assumed that power and prestige can simply be bought, which, as it turns out, it can – as long as you buy the top players and the top coaches: the talent and the talent that makes the talent. The arrival of Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola, and Antonio Conte suggests that the Premier League has learnt its lesson. It will now dominate the industry for the foreseeable future - not by creating the new but by buying the creativity of others.
This is simultaneously terrible news for the sport and excellent news for England. Fans at the epicentre of this new hegemony can be forgiven for finding themselves morally torn, because the future, as Gareth Southgate might be about to find it, is one in which the England squad has a ready-made cohesiveness built around the most sophisticated, up-to-date ideas in world football. This can only help the national team, whose ten best outfield players are coached at one of these four clubs.
Few would have anticipated that, within 11 rounds of Premier League matches, Mauricio Pochettino, Pep Guardiola, Antonio Conte, and Jurgen Klopp would all be utilising remarkably similar formations and tactical preferences. Klopp has not attempted a back three and Conte does not so highly prioritise the counter-press, but when you overlay the patterns of movement and swirling attacking football there is an essential similarity.
Their strategies are subtly intersecting with one another to create a hybrid formation that is becoming a definitive Premier League Tactical Identity – and, therefore, a gift-wrapped template for the national team that evokes Spain in 2010 and Germany in 2014. Is it so ridiculous to claim that England, out of absolutely nowhere, are in the best position to lift the World Cup in 2018?
Against Scotland and Italy Southgate should give serious consideration to a 3-4-2-1, the formation that has become fashionable this season amongst England’s top clubs. Pochettino, Guardiola, and Conte have all deployed it, and with good reason: as the football pitch becomes more compressed and attacking lines become narrower, teams like Tottenham Hotspur are finding it tough to break down opponents when using a 4-2-3-1 shape – which has largely been found out after being fashionable for the majority of the last decade.
The 3-4-2-1 is an elegant solution, offering the same number of bodies in each area of the pitch while releasing the wide players to attack more (bringing width back into the game) and allowing two playmakers to roam freely in the central attacking third (the most important zone of the pitch in a game now reliant on high pressing and short passing). Defensively weak players like Eden Hazard, Pedro, Kevin de Buryne, and David Silva have been re-energised in a system that doesn’t require them to track back, and the central midfield can become nicely clogged with bodies when necessary.
Klopp doesn’t use this formation, but the free movement of his ultra-attacking team frequently shifts into the exact same shape (James Milner tucks in from left-back to join Jordan Henderson, and as Nathaniel Clyne drops deeper Liverpool create a wild, frantic 3-2-4-1).
Like Joachim Lowe’s Germany of 2014 (which used Guardiola/Klopp tactics well known to his largely Bayern Munich- and Dortmund-based squad) or Vicente del Bosque’s Spain of 2010 (which used Guardiola tactics well known to his largely Barcelona-based squad), Gareth Southgate can play an outfield ten made entirely of Liverpool, Spurs, Chelsea, and Man City players.
Imagine England in a 3-4-2-1 formation that relies upon high pressing and quick counter-attacking, with the unique advantage – and it would be unique in 2018 – of having ten outfield players already instinctively synchronised because of their club training.
Eric Dier, John Stones, and Gary Cahill in defence; Danny Rose, Jordan Henderson, Dele Alli, and Kyle Walker across midfield; Adam Lallana and Raheem Sterling in those crucial attacking midfield spots; and Harry Kane up front. Every player would understand the system, and every player would have at least two years of experience working with the world’s top managers.
Without doing anything at all, Southgate has been handed a ready-made tactical identity, something that every nation dreams of and few ever get the opportunity to experience. History has taught us that the key to international success is finding a rhythm that mimics the players’ club setup. England have got that. And they possess, believe it or not, exactly what is needed to win the 2018 World Cup.
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