Apparently, and I do often subscribe to this theory, international breaks are rubbish and there is never anything interesting to report.
Granted, that might be the case if you are an England fan and have become somewhat used to the team easing their way through any qualification campaign that doesn’t involve Wembley, rain and a wally with a brolly.
I’d imagine it’s quite dull being a Scot in the international breaks as well as, frankly, unless they expand the Euros to every single European nation you won’t be taking part in this lifetime.
But if you are Welsh or either one of the Irish nations then it’s been quite an exciting time as you’ve very much been in the running, despite the Welsh being handicapped by having Ryan Giggs in the hot-seat.
Despite all that, those countries will probably only get a cursory token glance in this column today because, even though we are scrabbling around a bit for anything vaguely comical, we’re not that desperate – after all, you don’t turn up here each week to read my thoughts on League Two, do you?
I’d imagine most of us have had better weeks than Joe Gomez.
He will have finished last week on a high, having played the last few minutes of Liverpool’s win over Manchester City last Sunday. He’d have looked forward to getting himself to St George’s Park, hopeful of having a bit of bantz with the City lads and then helping England qualify for Euro 2020. He would have been hopeful of sneaking in a few minutes at Wembley in England’s historic 1000th match, maybe even getting a start in Kosovo before heading back fully fit to Anfield to find a way of dislodging Dejan Lovren.
For Joe, it didn’t really go that way.
One joke that didn’t go down too well with Raheem Sterling saw Gomez with a scratch under his eye, Sterling banished from the team for one game only and Gomez bizarrely cast as the bad guy in the eyes of some England fans.
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Gomez did indeed come on as a late sub at Wembley, with the game already in the bag for England – but he arrived to boos. Exactly how the intelligentsia that are the England fanbase quite surmised that Gomez deserved to be booed on to the pitch is not quite clear. After all, you’d probably struggle to hold a coherent conversation with anyone who did boo him for long enough to understand their reasoning.
Either way, it left a bit of a blot on the landscape of England’s excellent performance against Montenegro – so much of a blot that Sterling, who’d already taken complete ownership of the situation by holding his hands up on social media (where else do public apologies take place in 2019?), felt the need to defend Gomez on Instagram himself.
The Liverpool youngster then went home injured, missing the trip to Kosovo. As I said, not the finest week off work.
England were very good in their 1000th match, putting Montenegro to bed by just the seven goals. It was a result Gareth Southgate will have been delighted with, if only as it helped the press move on from the events earlier in the week.
Harry Kane, who some people had been suggesting was ‘finished’ and should be replaced by Tammy Abraham was ruthless and helped himself to the classic Kane hat-trick – a tap-in, a poach and a lovely cultured finish from distance.
He’s now got more England goals than Alan Shearer, Nat Lofthouse and Tom Finney with 31 (32 after Kosovo, I know – spoiler alert), putting him in 6th place in the all-time list which is great, seeing that is where Spurs will probably finish the Premier League season.
It was also England’s youngest side since 1959, which is a delightful stat in it’s utter irrelevance to anything at all.
Kosovo went all weirdly experimental with Southgate giving Nick Pope a game in goal, Callum Hudson-Odoi taking the obligatory ‘Chelsea youngster’ spot and Declan Rice being recalled to the starting XI.
What did we learn from that? Rice really is overrated, Hudson-Odoi isn’t as good as Marcus Rashford or Jadon Sancho yet and Pope is decent enough.
Mauricio Pochettino will have been delighted to see the two Harry’s link-up so nicely for England’s opener, Winksy giving the keeper the eyes before rolling the ball home. The Poch, no doubt, would be a damn sight happier if they could do something like that in a Tottenham shirt sometime soon.
4-0 probably flattered England a little in the end with the skipper bagging another goal meaning he scored in every single qualification match – let’s see if he can do it in the knockouts this time, eh?
Wales have bought themselves a ticket by beating Azerbaijan 2-0 on Saturday with Gareth Bale seen on a football pitch.
Always one to endear himself to the Real Madrid fans, Bale said he gets far more enjoyment from playing for his country than his club.
Forgive me Gareth, I didn’t realise you still played for Madrid? That’s not a ticket to the tournament, by the way. Merely a ticket to the last game of qualifying – if Wales win that, they are there and not before.
Before Northern Ireland’s double-header with the Netherlands and Germany, there was talk that Michael O’Neill had killed their campaign by taking the Stoke City job.
That’ll explain Steven Davis missing the penalty that would have seen NI beat the Dutch 1-0 and get one foot on the plane then.
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