Euro 2020(1) Live! England vs Croatia

Let me say before anything else that I have deep reservations about doing this. A pit of gloom has formed in my stomach, a feeling of foreboding that may well say more about me than about the football match that’s due to be played at Wembley this afternoon. So, let’s just get this out of the way quickly. I don’t care for your disingenuous parroting of Trumpisms about “Marxism.” I still still less, should your deflection be the anti-semitic trope known as “cultural Marxism.”

The FA been as clear as they can be that this is an anti racism statement, and that’s all. The manager has said the same. If you choose to eith er not believe it or dismiss it because it says too much for your liking about your reasons for your behaviour, then I’m not sure there’s too much else that I can do or say. I certainly don’t hold out any hope of convincing anyone away from their deeply-entrenched opinions. So I’m going to focus on the football. There’ll be plenty of other nose going on elsewhere, most of it likely pretty unpleasant.

And that’s the full extent of what I say on that particular matter.

So, onto the football itself.

There is reason to be nervous about England, going into this fixture. They were stodgy in their last two warm-up matches, and the manager still doesn’t seem completely certain of what his strongest starting eleven is. And then there’s the fact that Croatia beat them in a World Cup semi-final just three years ago. Having said that, though, England took four points from six against them in the Nations League, and then there’s the argument that this Croatia team might be a little past their sell-by date. It has been suggested that there hasn’t been enoughchange to the Croatia team since 2018. We shall see. I’ll be back shortly before kick-off. In the meantime, here’s some team news. Argue amongst yourselves about how good or bad it is.

England: Pickford; Walker, Stones, Mings, Trippier; Phillips, Rice; Foden, Mount, Sterling; Kane.
Substitutes: D Henderson, Johnstone, Shaw, Grealish, J Henderson, Rashford, Coady, Calvert-Lewin, White, James, Saka, Bellingham.

Croatia: Livakovic; Vrsaljko, Caleta-Car, Vida, Gvardiol; Modric, Brozovic, Kovacic; Kramaric, Rebic, Perisic.
Substitutes: Kalinic, Sluga, Brekalo, Vlasic, Budimir, Pasalic, Skoric, Badelj, Petkovic, Juranovic, Bradaric, Ivanusec.