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

The most enigmatic team at the 2022 World Cup was clearly 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 specialty, of course, came from evaluating these results against specific opponents. Japan’s results were basically a mirror image of what you would have expected. They beat Spain and Germany – two of the top six favorites going into the competition – but managed to lose to Costa Rica, who were considered 32nd favourites. It was a curious, almost illogical series of results, but nevertheless the kind of situation that football throws up regularly. Presumably many Japanese supporters say things like “typical of us” and “we never do things the easy way”. Football results regularly confound expectations.

However, historically, England are Japan’s complete opposite at the World Cup. England aren’t a brilliantly unpredictable outfit that fool the big boys and then flop against the minnows. They are very simple and do exactly what you expect. They don’t swing against small sides. They roughly match the performance of the other sides on the side of the favourites. They are usually eliminated by the first serious challenger they encounter.

To test this theory, we can compare England’s World Cup results with their opponents’ 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 the 1998 World Cup onwards. But that still accounts for 32 matches, a decent sample.

In this chronological order, the results. 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 the single digits, in orange for a team ranked 10th to 19th, and in green for a team ranked 20th or below. A penalty shootout loss is marked with a star, a penalty shootout win is marked with two stars.

This table is sortable on the desktop. If you click on “ranking”, you can order these 32 games according to 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’s a summary of whether the two categories match. The three pink lines show the expected results, the four silver lines show when a surprise occurred, and the two blue lines show how many genuine hits there have been.

And of those 32 matches – from the 1998 World Cup onwards – in 22 (69 per cent) England’s result is exactly what you’d expect given the strength of the opposition.

Three times England have faced weak opposition and only drawn – all 0-0. The first was actually a perfectly good result, as a goalless draw against Nigeria in 2002 meant England progressed to the knockout stage, and the third was a virtually dead rubber against Costa Rica in 2014, as England had already been relegated and put in reserve. . That’s why only 0-0 draws with Algeria in 2010 can be considered a really bad result.

The only time England completely flopped against (on paper) weak opposition was in the semi-finals of the last World Cup. Croatia was only ranked 20th in the world and England were defeated in extra time. Perhaps that ranking slightly understates Croatia’s quality, but it illustrates well how simple England’s path to the final was.

Of course, in eight matches against “orange” opponents, England have played five draws. Positive results reached Colombia in 1998 and Wales this year. The defeat came to Romania in 1998.

And in nine matches against a “red” opponent, England has won only one – a 1-0 group stage victory over Argentina in 2002, thanks to David Beckham’s goal from a penalty kick won by Michael Owen. The Athletic columnist Mauricio Pochettino.

In fact, even two draws against serious opposition ended up being penalty defeats, against Argentina in 1998 and Portugal in 2006. So if you count those games as defeats, England have lost eight of their nine matches against top ten opposition. The FIFA ranking was introduced.

What is the reason for this model? Maybe it’s a silly question trying to find a reason why things usually go as expected. But the experience of Japan (or Spain and Germany) shows that this is not always the case. England don’t suffer defeats as shocking as Argentina did against Saudi Arabia, and they don’t beat stronger opponents in the same way that, say, Belgium did against Brazil four years ago.

Maybe it’s because England are always quite beige tactically. They are not high-risk attacking sides who mass forward and leave themselves exposed at the back – an approach likely to increase the chances of a shock result.

Likewise, they tend not to be a flexible side, changing their approach to match that of their opponents. Teams that work backwards from the opposition are often effective at boring strong sides, but lack a positive identity to break down weaker opponents.

English is always just itself; their approach is designed to suit their own players. There is rarely enough tactical ingenuity to overcome a stronger side, but the quality of individuals is usually good enough to overcome weaker opponents. It does not bode well ahead of the clash against fourth-placed France, and perhaps shows that tactical flexibility and a focus on boring the opposition could be in order.

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