New vibes. New toys. New roles and perhaps even new rules. And, yes, the more familiar sight of Harry Kane banging in a couple of goals and wheeling off to the corner flag in that slightly leaden jog of his: less a man who has just scored for his country and more a guy who has just secured quite a good parking space.
But perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this routine win secured against routine opposition was just how mystifyingly un-routine it felt in parts: the same team, but somehow lit in a different way, filmed from different angles. It’s still probably too early to say whether this is the Lee Carsley effect. But it definitely feels like the No Gareth effect.
Of course fresh tournament cycles always offer a certain sense of renewal: the natural wastage of retiring and receding players, the licence and the blank canvas. But England’s first home game for eight years without Gareth Southgate in the dugout was still a vivid culture shock. A new combination on the left. Jack Grealish at No 10. A 24-year-old from Lille in central midfield. Noni Madueke on as a late substitute. Turns out another future was possible all along, one that didn’t require Kieran Trippier at left wing-back.
We’re not going to relitigate the whole Gareth era. You don’t need that kind of tedium in your life. But these two games have already exposed the heartbreaking triteness of this whole handbrake on/handbrake off discourse, a dialectic that basically hounded Southgate for the last three years of his reign until it finally sent him mad. The choice here was never between simple attack or simple defence, but between new and old angles of approach. Between a fresh pair of eyes and the same eyes.
So instead of shuffling Trent Alexander‑Arnold in and out of various roles, you give him a chance to nail down the right‑back slot and are rewarded with his best display in an England shirt. You give Anthony Gordon the keys to the left flank. You give Angel Gomes a look. Not all of this is guaranteed to work, or does work. But at this stage of the cycle, the ambition is the thing.
The real revelation was at left‑back, although this is really a laughably inadequate way of describing what Rico Lewis does. Like all the best Pep Guardiola products, Lewis could frankly be a central midfielder or an inside forward or a false 9 or a pitch invader. What matters is that this is a player who could scarcely be less aligned with the lineage of his position, with the Kenny Sansoms and Ashley Coles and Chris Powells and Steve Guppys who came before him.
The first indication that Lewis was not going to be your ordinary left‑back selection came early on, when he took the ball with his back to goal in an advanced area and, as he laid it off to Declan Rice, indicated where he reckoned the 60-cap international veteran should play the ball next. Lewis is still 19, but already seems to conceive the game in the abstract, to possess the coach’s sixth sense for where the spaces might open up.
There was a nice one‑two with Grealish and a run where he rode two challenges and a deft combination with Eberechi Eze late on. But essentially this is a player who just plugs in: who makes sense of tight spots, who offers a different wavelength, a different tempo. Watch him for a full 90 minutes and it’s remarkable how much of the game he spends walking.
after newsletter promotion
It was actually Southgate who gave Lewis his debut last November against North Macedonia. But for all his many apostate qualities, this is a position Southgate has largely seen in canonical, literal terms: the defender who plays on the left. So it’s Luke Shaw or Ben Chilwell, and when you can’t pick them a right-back like Trippier or Ashley Young. Lewis lasted one game, giving away a penalty and promptly being dispatched back to the under‑21s.
But elite football – particularly at club level – has given fresh life to the full-back role. No longer do they cleave faithfully to the touchline. No longer are they understood primarily in terms of their defensive function. Lewis wants to develop into a central midfielder one day, and fair enough, it’s probably what he should want. The reality is that in the ultra-fluid modern game, it probably doesn’t matter.
Maybe Lewis makes this position his own. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe Carsley gets the permanent job and maybe he doesn’t. But it’s a measure of England’s evolution that four games ago England’s left‑back was Trippier, and now it’s a teenage wonderkid who can be literally anything he wants. No fixes and no answers just yet. But it’s a new perspective on an old problem, and for now perhaps that’s enough.