10 min: The resulting free kick is hooked into the Czech box. Stones eyebrows a harmless header out for a goal kick.
9 min: Kalas and Kane complete for a high ball. The England captain catches an arm across the jaw. He stays down for a bit, but eventually gets up, rubbing the old chin. Clearly a sore one. The referee has a quiet word with the Bristol City defender.
8 min: Kalas flings a throw down the right. Maguire improvises a backwards header to see off the threat of Masopust.
6 min: The Czechs ping the ball around, enjoying some pretty possession for the first time. Rice puts and end to it by clipping Darida from behind. Soon after the restart, Holes bundles the perpetually fouled Grealish to the ground. One reducer all.
4 min: That was a lovely ball down the flank by Shaw, and a delicate lob by Sterling. That’s got Wembley cooking early doors. A fine atmosphere. “You have unlocked the mystery of why Jordan Sancho is off the pitch,” writes Mary Waltz. “He is a Trotsky deviant and the Big Man, Kane, is plotting his demise!”
2 min: Shaw scoops a ball down the inside-left channel. Sterling tears clear, chasing after it. Easy as that. Vaclik rushes out to claim. Sterling gets there first, though, scooping over the keeper and into the empty ... ah. The ball clanks off the outside of the right-hand post and away. So close to a sensational start!
Here come the teams!England wear their famous white, the Czechs in first-choice red. Please stand, or stay sitting, whatever really, for the national drones. We’ll be off in a minute or two! “On ITV, Mark Pougatch just said it could be a ‘Sliding Doors’ moment for Grealish,” reports Ben Bennett. “It’s weird that a middling 90s film with John Hannah in it has made such an impact on the contemporary lexicon. I can’t help picture Roy Keane on the sofa with his Live, Laugh, Love mug cosying up on the sofa watching Paltrow’s multiverse romances, having a little cry.”
The players line up. Photograph: Matt Dunham/Pool/Reuters
Deconstructing the knee. “In the face of the inevitable Czech (or Schick) puns that will be used tonight, a Czechia side featuring Darida/Derrida in midfield offers some variety,” begins Satya Gunput. “Given that some MPs are convinced that England players ‘taking the knee’ against racism are part of a Marxist plot to subvert the nation, it must be an exciting night for Harry Kane and his communist reading group. Coming up against the author of such hits as ‘The Spectres of Marx’ and ‘Whither Marxism’ is sure to bring the best out of the team.” Boo! Boo! Keep post-structural philosophy out of football!
Some correspondence from the official Gareth Southgate Fan Club. “Completely baffled at Southgate’s decision to leave Sterling on the pitch and Sancho off it, especially given his reasoning for allowing Grealish to ‘express himself’ in a game with lower stakes. What does Sancho have to do to get a look in?” - Rahul Vanamali.
“What on earth is Southgate thinking starting Maguire? No way any player should be expected to do a full 90 minutes straight after injury, so that means you have one less sub. If he wants him to get minutes then bring him on if you are leading and the other subs don’t matter” - Charlotte Casey.
A cheerful Harry Maguire talks to ITV. “It’s amazing to be selected in the squad in the first place. Then obviously to get my chance to play tonight and overcome the injury that’s set me back for over six weeks, which is quite strange in my career because it’s probably the longest one I’ve had. I’ve had some tough moments but I’m here and ready to play. There are always nerves before a game, especially for England, but they’re a good thing. In training you can only go so far, the game is what matters, and you get your fitness in a game, though I feel I’ve done everything right to prepare myself for this. The boys up to now have done a great job. We want to entertain the crowd and put big smiles on their faces. We want to score goals. We want to play with intensity and tempo, and try to control a lot better than we did against Scotland.”
Southgate also appears to rule out any possibility of Mount and Chilwell appearing in the round of 16. Should England win tonight and top Group D, Southgate’s team will play the runners up in Group F next Tuesday. That’s the first date the pair would be available for selection again, though it’d be a tight squeeze. “Even that will be very difficult given the training schedule and the need to isolate. We’ll have to look at that as we move forward.”
Then he moves on to this evening’s selection. First up, the dropping of Phil Foden: “He’s on a yellow card. Given we look like missing two players for the next round, I don’t want to take a risk on a third. It’s a shame for Phil, but I think it’s the sensible decision.” Then onto Jack Grealish: “It’s one of those nights, it’s a rarity in tournament football. There is a prize, we want to stay at Wembley, and it’s a great opportunity, we want to play winning football. But also the consequence of not doing so well is less fatal. So it’s a great night for our attacking players to go and express themselves.” Then Harry Maguire: “He’s been the outstanding English defender in the league this season, and has been a bedrock. It’s a difficult call because Tyrone Mings has been a colossus, but it’s a good opportunity for Harry to get 90 minutes. We were hoping he’d be available for this game, and he is.”
Gareth Southgate speaks to ITV about the loss to Covid protocols of Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell, after their contact in the tunnel last Friday with the stricken Billy Gilmour. “They are of course hugely disappointed to miss the games. We’ve just had to get on with it. It’s a bizarre situation really. They’ve spend 120 seconds too long in a fairly open space. It’s full of contradictions for me, but we have to get on with it. Frankly I don’t understand it at all. There are teams travelling around by plane, by coach, by bus, sitting in enclosed spaces for hours, and our two boys have been pinged for something which is ... y’know ... yeah, I don’t get it, I really don’t get it.” He also once again addresses the fact that England have two players self-isolating while Scotland have none. “I have no issue for Steve Clarke or for Scotland, I don’t want them to have any more issues than we’ve had. But it seems a bizarre situation.”
Southgate speaks. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian
Four changes for England from the starting XI named against Scotland. Jack Grealish and Bukayo Saka start, while at the other end of the pitch, Harry Maguire and Kyle Walker return. Tyrone Mings and Reece James drop to the bench, Phil Foden is left out altogether, and Mason Mount is in self-isolation, having been in close contact with Billy Gilmour. The Czechs name the same side that drew 1-1 with Croatia last Friday.
Six members of the Czech squad have experience of playing in England. Tomáš Souček and Vladimír Coufal are currently impressing at West Ham, Matěj Vydra bustles for Burnley, and Tomáš Kalas is captain of Bristol City. Aleš Matějů spent a couple of years at Brighton & Hove Albion, while Ondřej Čelůstka had a brief spell on loan at Sunderland.
Stop Schick, stop Czechia? The Bayer Leverkusen striker has scored all three of the Czech Republic’s goals in the tournament so far, as Scotland will not need reminding. He also scored in the Czechs’ final warm-up game against Albania, so is currently on a blistering hot run of four goals in his last three international appearances. His overall tally for his country is none too shabby either: 14 in 28. Jordan Pickford is advised to keep the walkabouts to a minimum this evening.
Czechoslovakia won the Euros in 1976. You can read a bit about the greatest international tournament in history (yes it is) in the article below. Those in search of even more detail of Euro 76 can find some in this issue of the Blizzard, as well as a superb tome by Jonathan O’Brien called Euro Summits: The Story of the Uefa European Championship, which explores every nook and cranny of the finals from 1960 to 2016, and gets the official MBM stamp of approval. Highly recommended.
This is the first time the English and the Czechs have locked horns at a European Championship finals. England did meet Czechoslovakia twice at the World Cup, though. They scraped a victory in Guadalajara in 1970 thanks to an Allan Clarke penalty, and weren’t much more impressive when winning 2-0 in Bilbao in 1982, the Czechs the architects of their own downfall, Jozef Barmos scoring an own goal, keeper Zdenek Hruska dropping one at the feet of Trevor Francis.
England and the Czechs faced each other in qualifying for these finals.England won the match at Wembley, back in March 2019, with great ease. Raheem Sterling scored a hat-trick, Harry Kane netted a penalty, and a Tomáš Kalas own goal put the tin lid on the Czech Republic’s biggest defeat as an independent nation. Declan Rice made his debut that night.
It looked good for England in Prague a few months later, when Kane again scored from the spot after five minutes. But Jakub Brabec equalised five minutes later, and Zdeněk Ondrášek snatched victory with five minutes to go. That was the Czech Republic’s first win against England, though they’d also beaten them twice as part of the old Czechoslovakia.
England are already through, so can’t really lose tonight ... but they can’t really win, either. If they see off the Czech Republic this evening with confidence-building panache, they’ll finish top of Group D. Hooray! The only problem being, they’ll most likely go on to face Germany at Wembley in the second round, and Joachim Löw’s men have just rediscovered their mojo. A draw or defeat would leave Gareth Southgate’s men in second place, and most probably fated to play Spain in Copenhagen. That’d be a more palatable prospect against blunt opponents ... but anything other than a good win tonight will get everyone’s dander up, so, y’know. It’s possible that England could end up third, and in the lap of the gods, but only if they lose and Scotland run a few past Croatia, so let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.
Much better to forget about the permutations and accept that whatever will be, will be. It’ll be fine whatever happens. Knockout football’s a-comin’ one way or another. So pull up a chair. Pour yourself a glass of cordial. Stop and smell the roses. Enjoy the game. Kick off is at 8pm BST.
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