Greece deserved winners as England experiment fails

A failed experiment, which will doubtless lead to the first calls over whether that should be said of Lee Carsley. The interim England manager himself said he wouldn’t describe his tactical approach to this first senior defeat in that way, only to also say it was something worth trying. He then actually refused to confirm he wanted the job, but talked around it so much he started to tie himself in knots.

- MIGUEL DELANEY

England 1 Bellingham (87)

Greece 2 Pavlidis (49, 90+4)

There was even an unfortunate slip where he said “hopefully” he’d be returning to under-21s, but that was surely just on the condition he doesn’t end up with the senior job. The scrutiny that comes with the latter was perhaps getting to him for the first time. There were moments when his explanations seemed as confused as his formation. Against that, Greece had such a clear focus. Their 2-1 away win was all the worse since the brilliant Vangelis Pavlidis scored both of their goals to show Carsley the value of a forward on a night when he took the historic step to go without one.

A line that goes from Dixie Dean to Harry Kane was broken, for a false nine that will instead bring talk of a false dawn.

Another little twist on the night was that Jude Bellingham did score England’s only goal, but that after he had been moved back from the forward position after a formation that clearly failed. Carsley was no doubt doing his own thing – how else to describe this approach? – but he still looked like he was appealing to popular sentiment by putting all his stars in the same side. Bellingham led a strange team that also included Cole Palmer, Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka.

“It was a case of, ‘let’s try something different’,” Carsley explained afterwards. “I’m happy to take the blame for that. It was totally my idea. I thought about it long and hard in terms of how it might look, how it might feel. It probably didn’t come off tonight... it definitely didn’t but I don’t think we give up on having that opportunity to try something different.”