England were poor in the first half of their 2026 World Cup opener against Croatia but put in an excellent display after the break to earn a 4-2 win.
This wasn’t entirely pretty, but the end result is three points for England and a winning start to their 2026 World Cup campaign.
In beating Croatia 4-2 in Dallas, Thomas Tuchel’s men navigated their way past their most difficult Group L opponents and, in doing so, took a major step towards the knockout stages.
It was a strong second-half performance that got them over the line, as England tore Croatia apart to storm to what eventually looked a rather convincing victory.
But it hadn’t always appeared as though that would be the case. That positive display after the break followed a shaky first period in which England lacked incisiveness with the ball, and their frailties without it were highlighted and exposed ruthlessly by experienced opponents.
The first half ended 2-2, but England hadn’t played well. Croatia had largely kept them at arm’s length, and they were the more threatening side throughout.
In fact, as was the case for much of Gareth Southgate’s reign, England relied on dead balls. They were awarded a penalty early on when Martin Baturina’s fine strike and deservedly so. England’s game plan was for Kane to drop away from the centre-forward position and for Madueke, Anthony Gordon and Petar Musa equalised.
England ended the half with the vast majority (0.96) of their 1.36 expected goals having come from dead balls. And they conceded as many goals (two) as they had in the first halves of their previous 21 matches combined. There was a lot of room for improvement.
Fortunately enough, they came out for the second half transformed. Kane revealed after the game that Tuchel had told the players at half-time to go for broke, not to fear losing by throwing men forward, and it worked.
Bellingham raced away down the right to finish off a 23-pass open-play move with the second half less than two minutes old to put England back in front. The goal meant that 57% of his England goals have come at major tournaments (4/7) – the highest ratio of any player with 5+ goals for England.
There was no way back for Croatia after that.
England were relentless. Their movement and passing were far more purposeful and efficient, and there was far less in the way of aimless punts forward from back to front that bypassed the whole midfield. Their long passes in the second half followed a very different pattern to those in the first.
The result was a dominant performance, and more shots on target (nine) than any other team has managed in the second half of a match at the 2026 World Cup, despite playing against a high-quality Croatia side. Uruguay managed eight against Saudi Arabia and France had the same number against Senegal, but England topped both.
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