England: Jude Bellingham rescue act gives Gareth Southgate hope but frailties remain


There was a passion behind Gareth Southgate’s punch of the air that belied the fact this was a mere friendly — and a noise from the crowd that defied the reality that most of it was already halfway home.

With his 95th-minute equaliser here last night, Jude Bellingham delivered what will, in all likelihood, eventually go down one of his more modest rescue acts, snatching the 2-2 draw with Belgium that ensures England do not go into their pre-Euro 2024 hibernation on the back of successive defeats.

In truth, though, this was always going to be an international break in which results were secondary, and even at 2-1 down, Southgate had a fair number of positives on which to lean. There was Ivan Toney’s first England goal, Jarrod Bowen’s sparky display on the right, in which he was unlucky not to score his own, and, above all, the slick performance of 18-year-old Kobbie Mainoo in the centre of midfield.

Just as defeat would have done little to detract from those, however, nor can Bellingham’s late leveller mask the fact that for the second game in a row, Southgate saw his team’s defensive frailties worryingly exposed.

Perhaps that is a scaremongering assessment, given the backlines which obliged both Brazil and Belgium on the counter-attack will, all being well, bear little resemblance to that which starts the Euros against Serbia on June 16.

Inside 10 minutes here, just as Kyle Walker had hobbled off early against Brazil, Southgate lost John Stones to injury, leaving him without a single one of the five or six senior defenders upon which his tenure has been built.

True, Belgium’s first goal was a gift from one the old guard, a dreadful clearance by Jordan Pickford punished by Youri Tielemans. But if this was the kind of clanger Pickford’s critics have warned has always been coming, then in a friendly on the occasion of his 59th cap was probably not the worst time for the first of them to arrive.

England remain frail at the back (The FA via Getty Images)

Lewis Dunk has no such credit in the bank, and after a mistake off the bench for Brazil’s winner on Saturday, a second in the space of four days may mean his Euros race is run. Isolated against Romelu Lukaku, the Brighton defender seemed spooked by the memory of having come off second-best in the same duel in the Stadio Olimpico earlier this month and went into brain fade. Lukaku’s cross off the outside of the boot to pick out Tielemans for the midfielder’s second was, it must be said, a peach.

Elsewhere, Joe Gomez, Stones’s early replacement, was given a torrid time defensively by the pacy Jeremy Doku, while Ben Chilwell still has not convinced. Jarrad Branthwaite, the most highly-rated young centre-back around, did not make it off the bench.

And so, while the rest of his team has evolved over the course of an eight-year reign, Southgate finds himself hoping the same defence — minus wing-back Ashley Young — that excelled at his first major tournament can return to fitness in time to start his fourth.

Luke Shaw, who did not come into the team until the run-up to Euro 2020, may start at left-back if fit, but otherwise Southgate’s plan will almost certainly be for a back-four made up entirely of Russia 2018 veterans: Walker, Stones, Harry Maguire and Kieran Trippier.

“We’ve had a consistent defence because of the qualities they have,” Southgate said last night. “We needed to test the other guys against high-level opposition and we’ve been able to do that in the last two games.”

With all of the incumbents, to some degree or other, struggling with injury, perhaps this is Southgate getting his comeuppance for failing to bed in a potential successor or two sooner, instead sticking by Maguire through the depths of his Manchester United form. Perhaps, it simply shows he was right to do so all along.

Likewise, Southgate was forced to defend his decision to start Stones in a second successive friendly, insisting there was no overload risk attached to the adductor injury that now makes the 29-year-old a doubt for Sunday’s title clash against Arsenal. Ironically, were England to lose their one genuinely world-class centre-back this summer, it would be for the Gunners’s Ben White that calls would grow.



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