Is there any point England even rocking up at the Azteca as ‘worrying’ stat emerges? | OneFootball

England beat DR Congo and the World Cup dream remains alive but there is confusion and distress among the Fleet Street ranks given the unconvincing nature of England’s progress.

The Sun have retreated to a safe space of pretending Congo and Conga are the same word while calling Germans ‘the Germany mob’ while the Mail are furious about the Mexican newspapers stealing their thunder.

Others have simply moved on to expressing bafflement at the very concept of ‘1am’.

Experimental treatment

England’s win over DR Congo was a curious and largely unconvincing one, and that prompts all manner of confused and confusing reaction.

Take Ryan Taylor in the Mirror, for instance.

The great thing about his response is that it’s very hard to disagree with any of the points he makes. But it’s also impossible to make them all co-exist.

Taylor wants Thomas Tuchel to stop experimenting and tinkering with things and settle on his best team.

Fair enough.

Taylor also thinks England looked their best against DR Congo when Declan Rice was at right-back.

Also fair enough, although we are firmly in 10,000 spoons territory with that use of ‘ironic’.

But that’s where the piece ends. That’s the conclusion. Time to stop experimenting. Time to pick the correct starting XI.

But does that mean it’s one with Rice at right-back? We don’t hate it, we’re not saying it’s wrong. But it’s also definitely very f*cking experimental.

We don’t mean to single Taylor out. There’s a lot of this sort of thing around all over the place today, and pinning it on Taylor is like pinning DR Congo’s goal on Djed Spence.

But it is the most egregious in its cognitive dissonance and its ultimate failure to even try to pull its two reasonable yet mutually exclusive central threads together.

As ever, all anyone wants England to be is a realistic, down-to-earth team that’s completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots. And also you should win things by watching.

Not too much to ask, is it?

Conga line

Incredible headline antics from The Sun here.

We like to think there was an hour-long to and fro on the subs’ desk about that apostrophe in ‘CONGA’D’ but absolutely no consideration at all given to the fact Conga and Congo are not the same word or in fact in any way related because one is (part of) the name of a country in Africa and the other is a drum from Cuba that inspired a novelty pop song.

Unless Kane actually did do the Conga in his celebrations and we just missed it. In which case, listen, fair play.

Frenemies

Shock news from The Sun this morning.

There’s a bit to unpack here.

Are they, though? But before we get to that, we do need to clear up this.

They really haven’t. It’s a very, very one-sided rivalry. Germans are always baffled when told by English people that England are their big football rivals. If you’re an English person struggling to understand this concept, imagine a Scottish person telling you Scotland are England’s big football rivals. It’s much like that.

But even so, have they suddenly turned en masse into England fans after their own heartbreak? Well… no.

Boris Becker did a tweet about Harry Kane, and he is definitely German (Becker, not Kane).

Bayern Munich did a tweet about Harry Kane being good, thus becoming the first football club ever to mention one of their players doing well in a major tournament. But we’re being facetious. There’s more to it than that, look.

While we pour mind-bleach into our ears to try and forget ever seeing the word ‘gush-fest’, that sounds more like a lot of Bayern Munich fans being happy to see one of their star players do well at the World Cup than anything else. There’s also absolutely no confirmation here that the ‘one fan’ on Twitter who now apparently speaks for all of Germany (or ‘the Germany mob’ as The Sun put it in unimprovably The Sun fashion) is even in fact German.

But no, the verdict is in. Harry Kane has bridged the divide and united these two rival nations at last. Hats off to The Sun as well for remembering something else right at the last minute.

It is thus indeed ‘no wonder crowds of heartbroken Germany fans have gone England mad’ even if those crowds do appear to exist solely in The Sun’s very hot head.

Mexican stand-off

High dudgeon in the Daily Mail this morning.

Highlighting England’s weaknesses in their national newspapers? How dare they? Don’t they know that’s our job.

But what awful hubristic drivel have those bolshy Mexicans come out with to suggest they have any hope at all against our brave boys?

How. Very. Dare. They.

Feeding time

Also from the Daily Mail:

We have, alas, run into the Gremlins Paradox here.

But Mediawatch is also fascinated to see the Mail already here dubbing this paradox-inducing 1am last-16 game ‘The Battle of Mexico City’. Has any game ever before been pre-dubbed in this fashion? Surely ‘The Battle of…’ is a sobriquet that can only be bestowed upon a controversy-laden match after the event?

Pick me

While there are valid reasons to worry about England’s prospects in their time-bending high-altitude Battle of Mexico City, this panic might just be a panic too far from the Mirror.

Now Raul Jimenez is a wily old striker and an obvious threat to England, but is the fact he’s scored six goals in 12 games against Everton for Wolves and Fulham actually that terrifying?

We’re absolutely not about to go down this rabbit-hole (we simply must resist for all our sakes) but it feels pretty safe to assume that Pickford, a man who has played over 350 games in the Premier League and spent nearly a decade now as the undisputed No. 1 for an ever-present team that has been largely quite sh*te during that time is the ‘favourite’ goalkeeper for a lot of other players who’ve also spent most of the last decade in the Premier League.

What we will absolutely insist on noting from right at the top of this rabbit-hole, down which we must not and will not descend any further, is that Jimenez’s ‘worrying’ record of six goals in 12 games against Pickford can also just as accurately be described as one goal in his last seven.