“And here are the bis bits from tonight’s 2-0 win.” All things considered the stadium announcer at Villa Park probably deserves some kind of civic heritage award for his fine work preserving the dry gallows humour of this part of the Midlands.
What was this occasion exactly? Ninety minutes of light cardio? A day to marvel, perhaps more than ever before, at the contrast in tone and staging between the basic product of club and international football? By the end this World Cup qualifier felt closer to a piece of mid-range pageantry, some kind of trooping, a march past, one of those tedious, formularised affairs where the whole point is plumage and horsery and shiny buttons, and where the only thing to say, in between drifting off into a revery on your own mortality is, yes, well, we do at least do these things very well.
The only job was to win and England won. It was a good warm up for Serbia, probably, in that nobody got injured. The most interesting thing about this game was that it wasn’t dross, or terrible, or an outrage. It was simply unmemorable, a single slab of textureless substance, like a month made up entirely of Tuesday afternoons.
The only moment of any note came on 65 minutes, as Andorra slackened just enough in the business of getting in the way, leaving space on the England right for Reece James to curl in a really nice dipping cross. Declan Rice nodded it down and inside the far post to make it 2-0.
Otherwise, this was … what exactly? What does a good game against Andorra look like? There must be goals. The goals must come regularly, leaving no time to sigh and feel the sun begin to sink in the sky. No crushing sense of futility please. We are England. And Villa Park was full at kick-off, a light fizzy fun place.
Ebe Eze started in the No 10 role, with licence to drop deep, press high, go wide, lay out a china tea set on a picnic blanket, basically anything that might present some kind of variety. He was energetic at first. But breaking down two lines of static human flesh is such an odd, bespoke task. How many times has Eze had to do it?
With 24 minutes gone he was involved in the move that led to Noni Madueke’s whipped cross being deflected in for an own goal. After which England settled into an endless battering of the pads, the entire game condensed into a 30 yard space in front of the Andorra goal.
Madueke had a good game, in as much as he looked like he was enjoying it a bit. Elliot Anderson was good on the ball, and seemed unafraid of the experience. Harry Kane touched the ball 12 times in 90 minutes. He basically wasn’t there, seemed to dematerialise, to become a gas.
And really Andorra were the spectacle here. They did almost nothing except smother and obstruct. But given England are ranked four in the world this was arguably their best away result since the 2-0 defeat against France’s world champs in October 1998.
This is not just a strange team, but a strange concept, a strange notion of what sport is. Andorra’s entire game involves trying to stop football happening. Understandably so. They have the fifth smallest population of any Uefa country. They are here simply to assert their status as a flag and a set of borders. To be Andorra is to be filler, football mastic, a semi-necessary prop, a plastic croissant on a morning talk show.
It must be a genuinely draining existence. Every moment is a matter of spoiling, taking energy out. From minute one, Andorra basically want this thing to stop, the entire game a protest against the existence of this activity. And yet they must still take part in it.
From the opening seconds here they pulled and jostled and nipped and got in the way. England won a free-kick with a few seconds gone and three times the ball was rolled just wide of the man taking it, really excellent, fearless shithousery. But what kind of life is this? Why is it happening?
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Koldo Álvarez has been Andorra’s manager for 15 years. It took him 49 games to get his first win. Andorra have scored in two of their last 25 games. The only team they regularly beat is Liechtenstein. Maybe they just need to take that Liechtenstein mentality into every game, dance like everybody’s Liechtenstein.
But there is still a vision there. Andorra are good now at losing respectably, albeit in a way that makes all human life seem essentially pointless. The last real shellacking was Portugal 7-0 five years ago. Watching them you wondered what their training sessions look like. Do they need a ball? Or a goal? Do they even need to be in the same place? Lads. Just go to the park and jostle someone. How do they scout players? People who refuse to move down the train carriage. Man-spreaders. Seat hoggers. Yes. This guy, this guy is one of ours.
In the end what took place here has zero relevance to the moments that will define Thomas Tuchel’s time as England manager. The job is to work out how to beat France, Spain or similar in a knockout game. This is what England generally fail to do.
But it would be unfair to say England learned nothing from this experience. They learned about the slow drift of a September Saturday, and about the oddly heartening limits of this game. Andorra may be laughably outmatched amateurs. But space is still space. Incision must still be earned.
Tuchel has seemed a little puzzled at times by the job at hand. Here is a man whose entire life is the overthinking of football, asked now to contemplate the underthinking of football, pragmatism, simple stuff, arms round the shoulder, fingers crossed. Perhaps there were small signs. Anderson was a good pick. Tuchel spoke well afterwards. And even this kind of win, a deathly win, a win to be endured, is still also a win.
