England will be seeking to bounce back from their Nations League defeat to Spain with a trip to Prague to play Czechia.
England’s threadbare defence could be causing Thomas Tuchel a headache
If England showed two very different faces in their final two matches of the World Cup against Argentina and France, the performance that they put in against Spain erred more towards the latter than the former.
They ended up on the wrong end of a 3-2 home defeat, but there was a point when they would have been 3-1 up had Harry Kane converted his penalty kick early in the second half. But for the second game in a row, the defence looked threadbare, and that’s the biggest clear issue facing Thomas Tuchel.
Meanwhile, about 800 miles west, Czechia were kicking off their campaign with a 2-1 home defeat, losing to goals from the still-not-retired Luka Modrić and Marco Pašalić of Orlando City, with Adam Karabec of Sparta Prague scoring their goal.
This defeat wasn’t especially unexpected, coming off the back of a disappointing World Cup from which they were eliminated at the first stage with one point after drawing with South Africa but losing to South Korea and Mexico. Santi Denia replaced Miroslav Kubek as head coach shortly afterwards.
England have the upper hand historically speaking
Czechia have only met each other five times before, with England having won three and Czechia one. Czechia’s win came in qualifying for Euro 2020, when they scored a 2-1 victory in Prague in September 2019. England’s came in June 2021 when they won 1-0 at Wembley in the Covid-delayed finals of the tournament.
As part of the former Czechoslovakia, they can point to a further two wins against England. Indeed, they won the first-ever meeting between them in May 1934, beating them 2-1 in Prague. Their other win came by the same scoreline in 1975 en route to winning the 1976 European Championships. The two were drawn against each other in the World Cup finals, in 1970 and 1982, and England won both, and have seven wins against Czechoslovakia in total.
Both teams have been hit hard by late squad withdrawals
Neither team will be lining up at full strength for this fixture due to pretournament withdrawals, with Declan Rice, Cole Palmer, Marcus Rashford, Kobbie Mainoo, and Tino Livramento all having withdrawn from the squad before the Spain match. Lewis Hall wasn’t risked against the World Champions after picking up a knock the last weekend before the break for Newcastle, but this was understood to be precautionary and he may now be available for selection. Trent Alexander-Arnold was unused on the bench on Saturday night, but may return, if Tuchel opts to shake up his defence in order to try and tighten it.
But Czechia were hit even harder by withdrawals than England, with David Zima, David Jurasek, Matej Rynes, Tomas Vlcek, Lukas Provod, Denis Visinsky and Tomas Chory all pulling out before the Croatia match, while Wolves defender Ladislav Krejci withdrew on Saturday due to a calf problem and playmaker Ondrej Lingr was left out of the match-day squad for reasons which remain unclear.
Will Trent Alexander-Arnold a call-up following two years in the international wilderness?
Trent Alexander-Arnold has barely played for England over the last two years, with only one substitute’s appearance in their stagnant 1-0 win away to Andorra in June 2025. At 28 years of age, Alexander-Arnold has just 34 England caps, a figure which looks low when you consider that his Real Madrid team-mate Jude Bellingham has 57, and he’s five years younger.
But having been drafted back into the squad, after another poor defensive performance against Spain and seven goals conceded in their last two games, the former Liverpool man may find himself back in the team. He’s only played four games this season for his club side and has only started twice, but his ratings have been decent and that defence really needs some reorganisation.
Vladimír Coufal was a solid presence over the five years that he spent with West Ham United, and he’s still going, both for Hoffenheim in the Bundesliga and for the Czechia national team, and he ranked as their second-best player against Croatia on Saturday night behind goalscorer Adam Karbec.
Their goalkeeping position is also worth watching. There are only two Premier League players in their team, and both of them are goalkeepers. Lukáš Horníček of Newcastle United started the Croatia match, and it’ll be between him, Matěj Kovář of PSV and Antonín Kinský of Spurs to start this time.
A trip to Prague should allow England to get back to winning ways
England’s last three games have now come against the three other best teams in the world at the moment, and it’s company in which they’ve held their own, despite having lost to two of them. But these three games and the radically different ways in which they’ve played out indicate that Thomas Tuchel might still not be certain of how he wants his England team to play.
There is certainly growing unhappiness at the way in which he’s managing the team. The Argentina set-up was the wrong one, and given that he was pretty much hired to bring a tournament win to England, he might even consider himself slightly fortunate to still be in the position.
But Czechia were poor in the World Cup and they were beaten at home by Croatia in their opening game in the Nations League. There’s little to suggest here that they’ve got enough in the tank to get past England, and they’ve been hit worse by pre-break withdrawals, too. I’ll go for a 3-0 win for England, though such has been the nature of their defence over their last couple of games that I have to admit having some doubts about that ‘nil’.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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