England need tougher games – here’s how I would fix international football ...Middle East

This was the bar, Thomas Tuchel declared. This camp was the benchmark.

After a series of underwhelming World Cup qualifying wins, and a wake-up call defeat to Senegal in a friendly, this performance, demolishing Serbia away, especially after the long walk down that tunnel everyone kept saying was so petrifying, but appeared just to be a tunnel with graffiti on it, was what Tuchel’s England was all about.

Except, let’s try not to get too carried away, shall we?

While undoubtedly the toughest country in England’s World Cup qualifying group, Serbia are 32nd in the Fifa world rankings, two places below Panama.

It sounds, when you first hear it, like an astonishing feat that England have not only not conceded a goal, but only permitted one shot on target in five games.

But is it a marvel of defensive solidity (from a team that, during this period, conceded three times to Senegal), or, actually, indicative of international football outside major tournament fading into obscurity?

What, really, can Tuchel and the rest of us learn from beating Andorra, Latvia and Albania?

In the space of two games, Elliot Anderson, the Nottingham Forest defensive midfielder, has practically become England’s answer to Rodri.

The opposing central midfielders that provided this litmus test? For Andorra, it was two footballers playing in the fourth and fifth tiers of Spain and Germany.

Against Serbia, it was the slight step up to Sasa Lukic, of Fulham, and Nemanja Maksimovic, who plays for Shabab Al Ahli Club, in the UAE Pro League.

While club football shifts towards more games between big clubs, Fifa seemingly wants the World Cup’s leading nations to play once every four years, in a handful of knockout games.

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England vs Andorra was everything wrong with international football

The new Champions League “Swiss model” format is generating an increasing number of games against Europe’s best sides in the group stage.

And Premier League clubs are so convinced that ensuring clubs outside the top six or seven wealthiest are competitive that they are broadly in agreement about anchoring spending, so that the most spent can only be a certain multiplier of the club with the least revenues.

Fifa, meanwhile, appear increasingly out of touch with what football fans want. You only have to look at the expanded summer Club World Cup, which struggled to attract fans into stadiums.

The 2026 World Cup will be the first 48-team tournament – an increase of 32 from the previous seven iterations. Prior to the 1998 World Cup, the tournament had included only 24 teams. That’s a doubling in the space of almost 30 years.

Meanwhile, international breaks are becoming an unwanted frustration for many football fans. This is merely anecdotal, but I know many football fans, the type who arrange their calendar around club matches, who don’t even bother to watch England games on TV, these days.

You can see why.

In the current World Cup qualifying campaign, Croatia have scored 17 goals and conceded once, in four games.

The Netherlands have scored 14 goals in four games, although they have, at least, conceded three, so there remains some jeopardy that an opponent might, at least, score against them.

Portugal: eight goals in two games, conceded twice. Spain have scored nine and conceded none in two matches.

German are the current exception to the rule, seemingly struggling in a group with Slovakia, Northern Ireland and Luxembourg. They are third on goal difference after two games – a draw and defeat. They will, in all likelihood, still qualify. Not least because coming second gifts you a playoff place.

Norway just hit 11 past Moldova. Erling Haaland, who scored five of them, apologised to the Moldovan goalkeeper afterwards.

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Surely there can be qualifiers to reach the qualifiers to avoid this kind of thing?

Fifa need only ask advice from Uefa, who do a pretty good job of it with the Champions League. And who have also tried to solve this problem by replacing some of the meaningless waffle of international football with the Nations League.

“I used to love playing for England,” Wayne Rooney said on his BBC podcast, The Wayne Rooney Show, before the Andorra game. “Watching England now and some of the games, you know they’re going to win, it can be a bit boring.”

He added: “[I feel] sorry for Thomas Tuchel because he probably wants a decent game where he can go and show what he can do. It’s a no-win [situation] really.”

And, echoing that, this is not to knock Tuchel, to be clear.

He can only work with what he’s got, and the countries that the system places in front of him.

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Still, even within the current format, the Football Association should be challenging everyone in the top 10 in the few available friendly slots before next summer’s World Cup.

Matches against Argentina, Spain, France, Brazil, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Croatia. Find out what works against the world’s best, before you meet them in a World Cup knockout game and it’s too late.

Instead, currently slated for October, is a friendly again Wales. At 31, they are one place above Serbia in the rankings. And one place below Panama.

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