If Thomas Tuchel thought his England side would breeze through their second group fixture on a wave of Croatian. slaying euphoria, he was in for a rud...
If Thomas Tuchel thought his England side would breeze through their second group fixture on a wave of Croatian. slaying euphoria, he was in for a rude awakening. The 4. 2 win over Croatia in the opener had promised attacking verve and transitional fluency. What we got at Boston Stadium was something far more pedestrian: a lesson in how to blunt a supposedly superior side without ever needing to be flashy about it.Ghana, to their immense credit, did not come to play. They came to frustrate. And frustrate they did. From the first whistle, they parked the bus with an almost cynical discipline, forcing England to try and pick locks they simply did not have the tools for. There was no surge, no sustained period of pressure that looked likely to yield a goal. Instead, the hosts were met with a wall of white shirts, a low block so deep it felt like they were playing against a back six and a midfield that refused to be drawn out of position.The telling detail from GoalZaza's man on the ground, David Hytner, was the lack of 'pulse. quickening moments'. For a squad containing the kind of creative talent England now boasts, that is a damning indictment. They laboured, they huffed, and they puffed, but they never looked like blowing the house down. The only real flurry of activity came in the dying embers of the game, a desperate scramble that felt more like panic than a coherent plan. It was stodge, pure and simple.What does this tell us about Tuchel's project Plenty. In international football, even against unfancied opposition, you cannot rely on momentum alone. Ghana reminded everyone of the oldest truth in the game: if you don't want to be beaten, you can make it very, very difficult for the other lot to beat you. England lacked a Plan B. They lacked the patience to stretch the play horizontally before striking vertically. They lacked, dare I say it, the tactical flexibility that Tuchel was supposedly hired to instil. It was a reality check, and a bloody sharp one at that. A point gained for Ghana Or two points dropped for England At this level, it is often the same thing.
