England 0 - 4 Hungary

Source

This game was not televised here, what I saw was Poland 0-1 Belgium but I do think the score merits writing about the England result. First of all. let's get one thing straight, England were by far the favorites, Hungary has had some good performances in the last couple of years but they are a far distance from the world class Hungarian team of the fifties, so yes, England were supposed to be top dog today, you know they do have some great players in their squad.

I have read the comments in English newspapers and all of them agreed England played a lousy game, but there are a myriad of opinions as to why they played like they did. The first victim is of course, Southgate, who is out of his depth with the national team according to many comments, another is the players are tired and should be given a break, the other one is that this Nations League should not even be played as it means nothing.

Let's just look at these three starting with Southgate. Personally I think he is too conservative with the way he makes the team play, but remember he got fourth place in Russia and second in the last Euros, so he must be doing something right, I mean England hadn't been in a final in decades.

The players are tired, this one I think is rubbish, a professional athlete, who is under constant training can easily take an extra few games in a season, hell I used to work in a job where I put in 12 hours a day and it was very stressing yet I did it, these players are getting paid top money for doing what they like to do, I'll be honest, I envy them. Now a better excuse could be that they are more focused on enjoying their vacations than on playing, this is reasonable but it does say something about their professionalism, you know, you are after all playing for your country.

The last excuse, that this tournament has no meaning is again, just an excuse. If there is no interest in it why expose your best players? The logical thing would be to send a B team or under aged players so they can get some international experience.

Overall a disaster for England score wise and kind of humiliating for the fans, but the big one this year is the World Cup, perhaps things will go better there for the English team.