- 6 hours ago
England's World Cup has started with what might be the tournament's most impressive performance so far. After finding their feet in the first half, they could have scored several goals in the second, as Thomas Tuchel's elite game mechanics kicked into gear. Adam Clery analyses the plan, and the change made at half time, that got them the win.
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00:00Right! Hello everybody! Welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel. England have started the World Cup with a win.
00:06That is obviously very nice and I could talk about a million different things that happened in this game.
00:12The selections, the substitutions, the tactical tweaks from both teams that swung the momentum forward and backwards.
00:20However, as a man who stood sort of here-ish during the last European Championships, I just really want to
00:29start with this.
00:32These are the stats of the second half of this game and this is a team, remember, who for years
00:38were accused of taking the lead and then not pressing their advantage.
00:43But in this game, in the 47th minute, England get in front and they put their foot on Croatia's throat
00:52and they could have ran up a f***ing cricket score.
00:57And I did say in the build-up to this tournament, I don't expect England to be perfect here, but
01:02I do at least expect them to look like the real deal.
01:06And in the second half, that looked like the real deal.
01:14All right, so to start, the thrust of this video, by the way, is him.
01:19It's Thomas Tuchel. It is about how England got in at half-time and he did what elite managers are
01:26supposed to do.
01:27And that is identify the problems they were having tactically and make the necessary changes to see them kick on
01:33and win the game.
01:35And yes, I know that sounds absolutely mad, but we were all there at Euro 2024.
01:39We know what it looks like when that doesn't happen.
01:43So I'm going to start at the very start with the team selection and it wasn't that big a deal.
01:50Anthony Gordon had made his case and while not being better than Rashford, is maybe a little bit more suited
01:56to playing with Harry Kane.
01:58Madweke over Saka is a change that makes a lot of sense if Saka is struggling with a bit of
02:03an injury.
02:04And as for Jude Bellingham, yes, I do personally think that Morgan Rodgers' suits came better.
02:08But if you can get your best player in your XI somehow, you should maybe do that.
02:15The only real cause for controversy was John Stones over Mark Gay.
02:19And by the end of the match, nobody cared about that at all.
02:23So England, as has been obvious from the moment Tuchel took the job, is that they really want to use
02:28Harry Kane in the way you're supposed to use Harry Kane.
02:32And specifically, by having three players behind him all really love getting into the space he has vacated.
02:40And if we look at this moment early on, he is not even in shot because he has dropped deep
02:46and the other three have all gone beyond him.
02:49And England repeated this idea in open play over and over, and that will be who they are in this
02:56tournament.
02:57Like, make a note of that. You can point it out in the pub every single time.
03:01And, like, these are all of his passes from that match.
03:04And I cannot stress enough how mad a pitch this should be to look at because that is your number
03:10nine.
03:11That is your centre forward.
03:12And yet, this is good because this is Harry Kane when he's at his absolute best.
03:17And in no other tournament for England has he been able or allowed to do any of this.
03:23He was slow to get in the year of 2020. He was a little bit awkward in Qatar.
03:26He was terrible in Germany. But this is just basically who he is as a footballer.
03:31And given how effective this has been in Germany this season, the sight of this in an England shirt should
03:38excite you.
03:39It's not in a weird way. I'm not trying to make a just really deranged pitch.
03:43But, like, in a football context, that's nice for him and them and us and you.
03:49But just the thing is, as a small aside to how great and good this is, in the first half,
03:56none of this actually worked.
04:01England's goals were both from set pieces, and we will talk about that later on.
04:04But Croatia, in open play, really did have a handle on England's approach.
04:10They followed Kane really deep and made it hard for him to turn and play forward.
04:14They pushed all the way up onto the fullbacks and cut them out as options.
04:18And so England really, really struggled, either from O'Reilly or James or Kane, whose main jobs this was,
04:25they struggled to get a forward pass in a central area.
04:28That's why it looked like they didn't have a lot of control.
04:30Like, O'Reilly and James are in this team because they are great footballers more than they are great fullbacks.
04:37So when England are building up, they should more often than not be the spare men that can make stuff
04:42happen.
04:43And yet, in that first half, because of Croatia's work off the ball, they could not really get into the
04:48game.
04:48Like, every time a midfielder gives it to either of them, they were jumped on and could not pass forward,
04:55forcing them to go back.
04:57And if they're going back, they are giving you absolutely nothing.
05:01And if we look at their pass maps from the first half, it's O'Reilly that side, James that side.
05:06Obviously, like, what is this?
05:08They're very wide, sure.
05:10They're getting the ball in the channels.
05:11But look how many of these passes are backwards.
05:14And given that Nico O'Reilly's whole thing is he can get into sort of these positions here and make
05:18late runs into the box,
05:19or the Rhys James' thing is he can get into positions here and pass and create forward from deep,
05:25you're not seeing any of that.
05:27So all you've got is two fullbacks who are both struggling to break through first a press and then a
05:34block.
05:34They've been nullified.
05:36And just before I show you the graph, I really want to show you, let's just agree for a second,
05:42the middle of the pitch is the width of both boxes.
05:46Right? Are we happy with that?
05:47Right, good. So let's highlight that.
05:49And how much of this would you say is either into or from there?
05:54Like, what are we saying?
05:55Three, maybe four or five passes if we're being generous, right?
05:59Well, if we change that to the second half and all of a sudden these are two players who are
06:05now really involved in the central play.
06:08And no, you're right.
06:09There's not a lot of incision in or around the box.
06:12They're not the ones making things happen or carving Croatia open.
06:15But they are now involved in the centre of the pitch so much more.
06:21So clearly the half-time team talk was about getting them both to invert into the middle of the pitch.
06:26And sometimes they would do it separately to make a double pivot.
06:29Sometimes they would do it together to give you a three around Anderson.
06:33But regardless, it made Croatia's wingbacks, who were previously jumping all the way up to them, suddenly very cautious about
06:41doing that.
06:41Because they were happy to go that high when they were wide, but they weren't happy to come into the
06:46middle of the pitch.
06:48So all of a sudden, bit of freedom.
06:50And the reason why doing this is important, right, is Declan Rice.
06:59And first half, for him, pretty difficult, I would say.
07:02We spoke two years ago about how hard he finds it being in deep positions with his back to the
07:07rest of the pitch, getting pressed, helping to dictate play that way.
07:11But second half, because you've now got both of these fullbacks inverting into the position he was previously in, Thomas
07:17Tuchel just kicked him fully 30, 40, 50 yards further up the pitch.
07:23And he had breakfast, lunch and dinner.
07:28Like here, he's high up and bang, he wins the ball back for this Bellingham chance.
07:32Later on, he is a forward option himself and could easily score from this position.
07:37He does not really contribute to any of the goals in the second half.
07:42But by moving in here, all of a sudden, England had much better control of the game.
07:48So if you were watching that, wondering why all of a sudden Croatia couldn't get on the ball as much,
07:52why they weren't advancing the ball, why we suddenly looked a lot more assured in possession,
07:57it was because we took Declan Rice out of this position here and put him much further up.
08:03And truly, honestly, madly, genuinely, as a card-carrying Gareth Southgate defender, it's not been an easy two years for
08:12me talking about the England side.
08:14But for all the good I would say he did as England manager, I'll hold my hands up right now,
08:20he never once made a tactical alteration mid-game as decisive or as effective as the one you saw at
08:29half-time here.
08:30There is, I'll admit, levels to this.
08:34And look, don't get me wrong here, right, I'm not getting carried away with this,
08:39but Thomas Tuchel has made a number of, let's say, controversial selections for this England squad.
08:45And his reasoning has always been, I'm a pragmatist.
08:48I know exactly what it is I want my team to do.
08:51And while these might not be the sexiest players available, I do think that they are the players that will
08:56help me do all the different things I want to do so England can win the World Cup.
09:02And I would argue, honestly, you might have actually seen every single one of those things and why they're important
09:11just in this one game.
09:13And, you know, not to pull myself off here, but in the preview video we did for England at the
09:20World Cup, we said this.
09:22You look at the names of some of the players who were not picked by Thomas Tuchel and instead comparative
09:28players who were picked.
09:30And the difference between them, universally here, is their height.
09:34So in tight games, they will be looking for set pieces to break deadlocks and force teams to come out
09:39of deep blocks.
09:40Which, yes, very well observed, does make them sound an awful lot like Arsenal.
09:45But if you haven't watched the video we did on how Arsenal won the league, we spoke about how using
09:51set pieces to break deadlocks is what enabled them to turn last season's draws into this season's wins.
09:59So what you do is you take the biggest team you can to help you do that.
10:03And if we go and look at all of the opt-a-data for the crosses England put in in
10:10this game, and these are successful crosses, by the way, not just attempted, successful crosses from both corners, free kicks
10:18and open play.
10:19Yeah, OK, they might have only led to one goal directly, as if that's somehow unimpressive.
10:24But the first goal is a second phase off a set piece.
10:27And just, that is a lot of crosses to win.
10:31Even if you don't score from them, that is a lot of first contacts, which teams are obsessed with getting
10:36in one game of football.
10:38This is the graph of a team that is very, very good at set pieces.
10:44And even though when they do score, it is very quietly a very Arsenal set piece.
10:48Like, as the ball comes in, you can see all these players band together and rush all the markers, leaving
10:54Harry Kane completely free.
10:56And as the ball sails over the top of this mass of bodies, it gives him a free header.
11:02And yes, fair play.
11:04Most people watching this video will have been watching this game between 9 and 11 p.m. in the UK.
11:08So your memory is understandably not brilliant about it.
11:12But England should have blown Croatia away purely on set pieces.
11:18Like this one, Kane gets completely free again and it's a decent save and then a scrambled follow-up that
11:23could have gone absolutely anywhere.
11:24Nico O'Reilly will live to be a million years old and not understand why he forgot where the goal
11:31was on this one.
11:32So, look, right?
11:34It's game one.
11:35Nothing is decided.
11:36Every single thing can change.
11:38But every single conversation me and a million other people have had about Thomas Tuchel and why he's a good
11:45manager and why he's selected the players he has and why he wants them to play in a certain way
11:50and why all of that is very important for tournament football.
11:54You've just had living lessons in all of it in the space of their first game.
12:01And I would personally describe that as, you know, not mad, not crazy, but certainly as encouraging as I have
12:09ever seen from England at a major tournament.
12:12And the thing I've not even really touched upon in this video is that Croatia, they're not what they were,
12:18sure, but they are still a really, really good team.
12:21And fair play, they've scored two very good goals from an attacking perspective.
12:25But if you will humour me on the XG here, right, England have nearly racked up three XG.
12:34And why should you care about that?
12:36Well, because they got all the way to the final of Euro 2024, averaging 0.8 per game.
12:43So if nothing else here, if you've come away unconvinced, if you still have a lot of question marks about
12:48them,
12:48just statistically, the numbers beneath this performance say it is orders of magnitude better than what you've been seeing under
12:58Gareth Southgate.
12:59And I would argue, even without the numbers, you can see that.
13:03And then, on top of that, the fact he's rested, both Rashford and Saka, means there's a possibility that England
13:10could even grow into this tournament,
13:12which is what the elite teams are supposed to be able to do.
13:17And if you think I'm getting carried away here, I'll put your mind at ease, right?
13:22Three beers. That's it. Just three beers.
13:24And I'm in America, so they're only about, like, that big anyway.
13:28So, in real terms, 1.8. Max two beers.
13:34So you know I'm deadly serious.
13:36And yes, that has been England's first game of the World Cup 2026, where they have beaten Croatia 4-2,
13:41in my opinion, very convincingly.
13:43But it's a long, old way to go in this eight-game tournament.
13:46So if you don't want to miss any of this searing insight, it's sweat, by the way, not nerves, 32
13:51degrees here still.
13:52You can get me across all the social medias, at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
13:56But it would be remiss of me not to ask every single one of you to please comment down below,
14:02happy birthday, Archie.
14:04You probably have seen him on the channel.
14:05He did the Buddha Glimp video.
14:06He's on all the live streams.
14:08He does the social media stuff.
14:08If he's editing this video as we speak, without him there is no ACFC.
14:13Please do wish him a happy birthday down below.
14:16It was yesterday, I think, so two days ago by the time you're watching this.
14:19But that still, that counts, doesn't it?
14:22Don't forget to subscribe to the channel as well while you are here.
14:26You can find us on all the socials since I'm doing some fun stuff on there.
14:29Look, one point something million for just talking about hydration breaks.
14:32That many people can't be wrong.
14:34And until next time, which is Ghana, I think.
14:38Yes, Ghana.
14:39I'll see you then.
14:41I don't know how they say goodbye in America.
14:43See y'all.
14:45Bye.
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