England’s predictable World Cup results suggest beating France would be a surprise

Undoubtedly the most enigmatic of 2022. the world championship team was Japan. They were eliminated in the second round, and their basic record of two wins, one draw and one loss is pretty insignificant on paper.

The peculiarity, of course, came from evaluating those results against specific opponents. The Japanese scores were basically a mirror image of what you’d expect. They defeated Spain and Germany – two of the top six heading into the competition – but managed to lose to 32nd-seeded Costa Rica. It was a curious, almost illogical sequence of results, but that’s the way football happens all the time. There are probably a lot of Japanese supporters who say things like “that’s typical of us” and “we never do things that easily”. Football results constantly confound expectations.

But historically, England are the complete opposite of Japan at World Cups. England are not a wonderfully unpredictable outfit that outwit the big boys and then fizzle out against the underdogs. They are very simple and do exactly what you expect. They do not sway from the small sides. They roughly match the performance of others on the fringes of the favorites. They are usually eliminated by the first serious challenger they encounter.

To test this theory, we can compare England’s World Cup performance with their rivals’ position in the FIFA World Rankings at the time. These rankings are not perfect and since they were introduced in the early 1990s, we can only use them as a measure from 1998 onwards. world championship. But still considering 32 games, it’s a decent example.

Here are the results in chronological order. The color coding is simple – green for wins, orange for draws and red for losses. The strength of the opposition is marked in red for a team ranked in single digits, orange for a team ranked between 10th and 19th, and green for a team ranked 20th or lower. A penalty shootout loss is marked with an asterisk and a penalty shootout win is marked with two asterisks.

This table is sortable on the desktop. If you click on “ranked” you can order those 32 games by the world ranking of the opposition. And when you do, a pretty obvious pattern emerges. When England face “green” opponents, they usually win. When they face “red” opponents, they usually lose.

And here is whether these two categories overlap. The three pink lines represent the results you expected, the four silver lines show when there was something unexpected, and the two blue lines show how many real shocks there were.

And since those 32 matches – in 1998. World Cup – 22 (69%) of them England’s result is exactly what you would expect given the strength of the opposition.

There were three occasions when England faced weak opposition and only drew, all 0-0. The former was actually a perfectly good result, as a goalless draw with Nigeria in 2002 England made it to the knockout stage and the third was essentially a dead end to Costa Rica in 2014 as England had already been eliminated and fielded a reserve team. . Therefore, only a 0:0 draw with Algeria in 2010. can be considered a really bad result.

The only time England completely stumbled against (on paper) weak opposition was in the semi-finals of the last World Cup. Croatia was ranked just 20th in the world and was beaten in extra time by England. This ranking may slightly understate the quality of Croatia, but it does show how easy England’s path to the final was.

In eight games against the “orange” opponent, England, of course, played five draws. The positive results were against Colombia in 1998. and Wales this year. Romania suffered defeat in 1998.

And in nine games against Red opposition, England have won just one – a 1-0 group stage victory over Argentina in 2002, when David Beckham scored a penalty which was won by Michael Owen. The Athletic. columnist Mauricio Pochettino.

In fact, even two draws against serious opposition ended up losing on penalties – to Argentina in 1998. and Portugal in 2006. So if you think this match is a loss, then England have lost eight of their nine games against the top ten since then. the FIFA ranking was introduced.

What is the reason for this pattern? Maybe it’s a stupid question, trying to find a reason why things are happening the way you expect them to. However, the experience of Japan (or Spain and Germany) shows that this is not always the case. England are not suffering shock defeats like Argentina against Saudi Arabia, nor are they beating stronger opponents like Belgium did against Brazil four years ago.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that England are always quite beige tactically. They are not a high-risk attacking side that pile forward and leave themselves open at the back, an approach that probably increases the chances of a shock.

Equally, they are not usually a flexible side to change their approach to that of their opponents. Teams that work behind the opposition are often effective at stifling strengths, but lack the positive identity to break down weaker opponents.

England are always only themselves; their approach is designed to suit their own players. Tactical ingenuity is rarely enough to defeat a stronger side, but the quality of individuals is usually good enough to defeat weaker opponents. This does not bode well ahead of the meeting with fourth-placed France and perhaps shows that some tactical flexibility and focus on stopping the opposition may be in order.

(Top image: Harry Kane reacts to Croatia’s elimination in 2018, photo: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty Images)