It’s time to talk about Declan Rice. Five years and 55 caps into his England career, Rice is one of Gareth Southgate’s non-negotiables, as sacrosanct as skipper Harry Kane or Jude Bellingham. And that has become a problem at a tournament in which England have universally underwhelmed.
The same incoherence that manifested in the group stages carried forward into the last 16, where England were an act of God from going home against Slovakia. In the smorgasbord of analysis, a thousand and one theories have been advanced to explain England’s alarming regression, but few have identified Rice as part of the quandary.
Kane’s position has been questioned. There have been calls to sit Bellingham. But no Rice dissenters, despite the fundamental structural flaw from which all else flows, the dysfunction in midfield. The Slovakia experience mirrored the group stages with the ball locked in an endless rondo, sideways and backwards across the English defence.
Southgate fried everybody’s brains with the expression of regret over the lack of a Kalvin Phillips replacement. Advancing Phillips as any team’s saviour is sufficient to raise red flags. However it highlights an awareness of an issue that continues to trouble England. Southgate was in the right area but no nearer a solution. And this is because he has either failed to identify the root cause, or he cannot accept that it might be Rice.
The No 6 role in which Rice is deployed requires more than desire, legs and lungs. It demands of the bearer vision and touch, craft as well as graft, and above all an IQ that would satisfy Mensa. There has been a Rice in every English battle since 1066. He meets the ancient English standard, the yeoman who will never let you down.
Southgate is as English as they come in his attachment to the qualities Rice guarantees, a player who will walk behind a plough all day, cover every blade, close down space, smash into tackles. His selection is essentially a defensive reflex that England managers, try as they might, seem incapable of shedding. And why Southgate reaches first for Rice 2.0, Conor Gallagher, in a crisis, someone who will “put himself about” with much the same enthusiasm.
And then we see Rodri anchoring Spain, Toni Kroos launching German offensives from deep, players who marshal the space in front of the back four intuitively, taking the ball and moving it quickly, short or long. This is not Rice’s game. When he is fit, the more effective Thomas Partey is preferred by Mikel Arteta in that role at Arsenal, with Rice playing in advance of him.
On Saturday England meet a brilliantly drilled Swiss team in the quarter-finals who are organised around Granit Xhaka, ironically the player Arsenal spent £100m to replace with Rice. None of this is to admonish Rice particularly, to cast him aside as rubbish, only to acknowledge that at this level, where difference is measured in fractions, Rice is fractionally short.
John Stones and Marc Guehi have spent four matches desperately seeking an outball that will get England moving, a change of pace that allows the team to advance at pace, to break the opposition lines, instead of endlessly recycling sideways and backwards between full-backs and goalkeeper.
The introduction of Kobbie Mainoo, made reluctantly by Southgate, offered some improvement, but good as he is, Mainoo does not have the authority to boss Rice about the paddock, and thus tends to defer to the older man. Mainoo is not a natural No 6 either. He is better in the No 8 role where his ability to go past players is seen to greater effect.
The obvious replacement for Rice is Adam Wharton, the supernova who flew in from outer space via Blackburn, touching down at Crystal Palace only this year. Southgate deemed him good enough to select. By extension he must be good enough to play, so pick him. Southgate has seen what doesn’t work. As Gary Neville never tires of telling us, he cannot expect to pick the same team every game and expect a different outcome, or for Bellingham to bail him out with 80 seconds to go on repeat.
It’s time for a radical rethink. England will get the end they deserve unless Southgate is bold in his selection. In extremis against Slovakia he switched Bukayo Saka to left wing-back in a back three to accommodate Cole Palmer down the right. He must go further to beat Switzerland, starting with a tap on the shoulder of Rice.
