It didn’t take long for one wag in the travelling England caravan to come up with a deeply inappropriate nickname for that jazzed-up high-energy start to the second-half performance in Dallas last Wednesday. That name was: Packetball.
The word packet is, the Urban Dictionary confirms, slang for a small sachet of the same illegal and wholly inadvisable stimulant that was discovered in more than half of the Wembley Stadium toilets by a newspaper investigation after a home qualifier during the Southgate era.
Who knows, maybe England have found a way to connect on a more profound level with certain elements of the fanbase. There was often a sense of textural disconnect between the carefully metered football of that successful England team, and the more adrenal demands of parts of the support crowd for a faster, quicker, more Packetball-coded style.
Or in other words, for something like The Surge after half-time in Dallas when England produced perhaps the most visceral spell of sustained attacking power at this World Cup so far; all of it driven on by the wild-eyed figure on the touchline, out there whirling his arms like a triple Michelin-starred chef furiously shredding a barrel of kumquats while the service bells ping and the evening shift kicks into high gear.
England arrived in Boston on Monday for their second group game against Ghana, a 4pm local (9pm in England) kick-off at Boston Stadium the following day. There is some minor metal fatigue in the camp. At times against Croatia the defence looked in need of a more vigorous de-rusting. But England will approach their second public test lurking comfortably in the pack, a little lost in the haze, 13 days and 43 games into this supersized, mega-gulp World Cup.
To date, they really haven’t said or done a great deal of note outside that one deeply moreish spell of concerted attacking play. Energy on the pitch. Stealth mode off it. This is new. Is it sustainable? Have England found a way of playing, a strength to define this Thomas Tuchel era?
It feels worth noting they are now seen as a genuine threat in this tournament, a source of quiet misgiving among fans of those nations for whom an England World Cup win would represent an unbearably nauseating spectacle, which is, to be clear, most nations.
There is so far to go in this tournament. It will be very easy for any of these interestingly flawed elite international teams to lose one of their five possible knockout games before mid-July. There are two teams here, Spain and France, who England will always struggle to beat in a one-off game where genuine attacking edge and the ability to keep the ball so often decide the day.
For now, England have three interesting elements in their favour before Ghana in Boston and Panama in New York. First, that quality of going a little under the radar. There is less of an early flag-wagging vibe around this team, understandably so at such a convoluted tournament, and in an era that has yet to take on a really defined shape. England’s success or failure feels less epic, less tearfully vital. Even the prime minister, who told them to go for it and play without fear, has now resigned, just to crystallise the feelgood factor.
This will change when the knockout games appear, the call to arms, like seeing the ceremonial buttock rocket launched above the treeline. But Tuchel has so far been very good at blocking out the noise, to the extent you sense he doesn’t really feel or care about it. All England managers are eventually hounded from office. Would Tuchel even notice this happening?
It is an asset post-Southgate, where towards the end it felt as though Sir Gareth was keeping the sombre sense of duty going singlehandedly, more piously obsessed with the weight of the shirt than most of his players, who are further from that, Gen Z internationalists whose lives are muddled and encumbered by many things, but not so much Nobby dancing at the 1966 World Cup final.
It is liberating to see this England squad spending its days not at some epic gold-inlaid presidential palace, but at an everyday four-star chain hotel in Anywheresville USA, the kind of place where a paper-clip salesman in chinos says hi in the lift. It’s nice to see a squad selected with a sense of its capacities, one that recognises England have one really key attacking player in Harry Kane, and everyone else must fit coherently around that.
This is a realistic approach. Excluding shootouts, England have won four knockout World Cup games since 1990, against Denmark, Ecuador, Sweden and Senegal. A semi-final would be a good achievement, not least when it could involve beating Mexico in Mexico and Brazil in Miami en route. Knowing this is a strength.
The second thing England have is The Surge, the ability they showed in Dallas to enact the manager’s half-time words about playing without fear, using a lead as a stepping stone to climb higher, not a ledge to cling to.
Can they do it again? The Dallas Stadium is an air-conditioned bubble. There are concerns the temperature elsewhere may be a factor. Two things about that. It might even be raining. The games are also broken up clearly into quarters now, and into smaller chunks by the prominence of set pieces. Periods of rest and urgency can be more easily controlled. It makes sense to play in segments and surges.
And second, it is worth understanding what The Surge was. This was not simply running around more. When Tuchel told the players to “go for it, to play with more courage, to be brave, to be ourselves” (neatly slipping in the last of those concepts, like a reading comprehension: one of these words does not necessarily fit with the others) he meant England had to be brave first in how they pass the ball.
There is a tactical concept known, not as Packetball, but as “packing”: passes that are more aggressive, that take out more than one player in the opposition team. This is what Tuchel wants his team to do, to hold the ball more, show greater bravery in possession, and to make their forward passes more disruptive and effective when they come.
“We didn’t dare to eliminate, to play through gaps,” was his criticism of that first half. Daring to be precise, to hold the ball when necessary. This was what strangled Croatia in that period, not simply physical pressure, collisions, or being more energtic.
Also, the lines played closer together. A low block or a high block is fine: but it must involve the entire outfield unit; and the shift between those two states must be coherent and collective. This is why England counterpressed so well in Dallas after half-time, not by using more energy, but by being in the right spaces. Plus, of course, they were more aggressive in their duels, which is basically the key to making every system or tweak work.
These are the keys to understanding The Surge, and whether it is replicable. This was not some old-school notion of covering every blade of grass. It was using your energy in the right spaces and with the right collective effect. It doesn’t really matter what the temperature is if you’re doing this right.
The final thing England have in their favour is, as ever, their captain, who has reached a fresh peak in his career now, a global star out there saying “hi” to all his fans in Mexico in his press conferences. Here’s an interesting Kane fact. He needs 19 goals to make it to a genuinely eye-popping one hundred for England. Nineteen have come in his last 21 games. At the current rate, he could get there at the Euros two years from now. Leaning into that presence, surrounding Kane with willing runners, not competing creative talents, is another note of clarity.
There are many ways to fall over at a World Cup. But England will be interesting here. And who knows, the controlled surges of Packetball may, unlike anything else in that inappropriate formulation, turn out to be a smart and sustainable ingestion.
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