Latvia 0-5 England (Gordon 26, Kane 44′, 45+4 pen, Tonisevs og 58′, Eze 86′)
DAUGAVA STADIUM — Qualification for the World Cup achieved with two games to spare, another clean sheet and the fans singing his name. It was almost exactly how Thomas Tuchel dreamed it – but the songs they sung were anything but complimentary despite a 5-0 win over Latvia.
Tuchel’s complaints about the Wembley crowd on Thursday against Wales were met five days later with chants of “are we loud enough for you?” and “Thomas Tuchel, we’ll sing when we want” from the 2,456 travelling supporters, who barely let up in their sarcastic serenade of the German.
Anthony Gordon’s second international goal and a Harry Kane double before half-time gave them something else to sing about but it was only ever a temporary respite for the England manager.
A second-half own goal from Maksims Tonisevs and one off the bench for Eberchi Eze confirmed England’s place in the USA next summer with a one-sided scoreline, but rarely can a Three Lions manager have had such an overwhelmingly positive night while being subjected to such abuse.
Player of the match
Gordon scored England’s opener in Riga (Photo: PA)Anthony Gordon: Spritely, enthusiastic as ever, but with more end product against a very compact side
The win renders next month’s matches against Serbia and Albania dead rubbers but do not expect Tuchel to experiment too much: despite the lowly opposition on Tuesday, he made just two changes, one of which was to bring back his captain Harry Kane from injury, replacing Ollie Watkins who had gone home with injury himself.
The other was to drop Marc Guehi to the bench and reshuffle his defence to start a sixth different centre-half pairing in six games of Ezri Konsa and John Stones – but no one watching was that interested in his tactics.
The England travelling support were far more keen on making sure the German manager knew exactly what they thought of him. Before their team had recorded a shot on target, they had gone through a songbook that had clearly been germinating all weekend: “our support is f**king shit” was a clever twist on an old classic, as was “where were you when we were shit?”.
When they urged Tuchel to “give us a song”, the manager obliged with a wave in their direction and he did so again later in the hope it might a peace offering, but it did nothing to assuage them. He was better off taking his medicine and concentrating on the football.
Unsurprisingly, Latvia did not offer much of a threat. When they did make the mistake of attacking in the 26th minute, they gave it away and allowed John Stones to find space over the top and pick out Gordon, who cut inside to double his international tally.
“One nil, and we still don’t sing,” sang the self-styled “library” away to Tuchel’s right, who were singing captain Kane’s name for a bit when he scored twice in five minutes, first with a fine left-footed effort from outside the box and then when he converted a penalty of his own making in first-half stoppage time. With 76 goals, he is now just one behind Brazil great Pele on the all-time list of international scorers.
As so often happens, England found it hard to get going again in the second half and a downpour that started at halftime also dampened the hymn sheets of the away support, perhaps proving the point Tuchel had been trying to make. England did add to their tally, Djed Spence’s cross deflecting off the unfortunate Tonisevs at the back post, but they barely celebrated.
Mission accomplished for now, but nothing is won yet.
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