Leeds United players at Euro 2020

13 June

Kalvin Phillips put in a Man of the Match performance against Crotia. He made an assist when he dribbled past two players before passing an angled through ball to Raheem Sterling.

Wembley

Kalvin Phillips (CM): Justified his selection. Almost scored and injected urgency with a run to create the opener. 8 (motm)

This time last year Kalvin Phillips was a virtual unknown playing in the Championship with Leeds. But Southgate had already spotted something there: not simply a willing engine and a sound technical base but that rarest of qualities in the English midfielder. Unlike many players who like time and space on the ball – and instinctively, who doesn’t? – Phillips seems to prefer it when the midfield is packed to suffocation, when the breath is hot on his neck when the margins are at their finest and the tackles are snapping in from all directions.

Phillips does not have the passing range of a Jordan Henderson or the immaculate reading of a Declan Rice or the effortless class of a Jude Bellingham. But in the most congested area of the pitch, he demands the ball and gets the ball and almost always does something useful with it.

The less time you give him, the more he seems to enjoy it. He is brilliant at finding the little pockets of space that turn a simple passing move into a dangerous attack. And thus it was here, just before the hour, as he surged into the right channel to latch on to Walker’s pass.

England’s Kalvin Phillips beats Croatia’s Josko Gvardiol before laying on the pass to Raheem Sterling from which he scored England’s winning goal. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

In the space of a couple of seconds, Phillips had turned, ridden one challenge and slid Raheem Sterling in for the only goal of the game. It was a goal of infinitesimal margins: the exact run and the exact pass and the exact finish all aligned. And during these 90 inspired minutes, Phillips offered something new and hopeful: a vision of English midfield play based not on Hollywood passes or bloody head bandages or 30-yard screamers, but on quiet, restless excellence.

For the assist, fast forward it to the 1-minute mark. 

13 June 2021 

Ezgjan Alioski played for North Macedonia in a 3-1 loss to Austria.

14 June

Liam Cooper played in the match against the Czech Republic where they lost 2-0.

Patrik Schick scored the 2nd goal from 50 metres out  -

14 June 

Mateusz Klich played against Slovenia where his team lost 2-1. The match was noted for having a Polish player getting a red card in the 2nd half. 

Jan Oblak, a goalkeeper for Atletico Marid, played in goal for Slovenia. 

10 July 2021 

Euro 2020 Final

Unlikely duo work in perfect tandem

Phillips-Rice axis serves as defensive shield but also creative base for team to build from.

With Kalvin Phillips and Declan Rice in midfield, England have conceded just one goal from six games at Euro 2020 and are defensively sound.PHOTO: REUTERS

LONDON • England have had some outstanding midfield partnerships over the last 50 years, players who have ruled Europe with their clubs, but Kalvin Phillips and Declan Rice have emerged as the unlikely pairing now set to conquer the continent for their country.

David Platt, Paul Ince and Paul Gascoigne tasted the semi-finals of Euro 96 and/or the 1990 World Cup, while Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard were among the best in the world for several years but could never quite seem to produce their best when in tandem for England.

Colin Bell and Norman Hunter were also a world-class duo but were part of the team who failed to make the 1974 World Cup, and they were followed by a succession of domestic greats who never got close to glory on the international stage.

Now, a player who this time last year was helping Leeds out of the Championship and a 22-year-old who was rejected by Chelsea as a teenager have formed the midfield shield that helped England through five games at the tournament without conceding a goal, before Mikkel Damsgaard's free kick for Denmark spoiled the record in the semi-final.

As tactics come full circle, it is probably the relentless energy and terrier-style snapping of the Nobby Stiles-Alan Ball combination from England's 1966 World Cup-winning team that West Ham's Rice and Leeds' Phillips come closest to in terms of how they operate within the team.

Both have the ability to drive forward and deliver penetrative passes, which they do for their clubs, but both have also shown the tactical discipline demanded by coach Gareth Southgate to generally hold, and dominate, the space in front of the back four.

They both have a ravenous appetite for work and chase, harry, spoil, intercept and anything else they can think of to put the opposition off their stride.

Phillips began the tournament with a man-of-the-match display in the win over Croatia, while Rice was equally effective in snuffing out the threat of Luka Modric, having admitted he was "miles behind him" when watching England's World Cup semi-final defeat from afar in 2018.

Against Germany the destructive duo faced the superstar pairing of Tony Kroos and Leon Goretzka - Leeds and West Ham v Real Madrid and Bayern Munich - and did an absolute job on them, starving them of time and possession and breaking up almost every developing attack.

"We faced players like Kroos, Goretzka or (Ilkay) Gundogan and people said that Kalvin and I could not compete against them. We had to fight each ball as if it were the last of our lives," Rice said.

The return to full fitness of Southgate favourite Jordan Henderson led some to believe that the Liverpool captain would find his way back into the starting team, probably at the expense of Phillips, but the coach was not about to change a winning formula when on the brink of England's greatest moment for more than half a century.

"He's just a very good footballer," Southgate said of Phillips.

"High performance, low maintenance - we like that a lot."

West Ham manager David Moyes has said pretty much exactly the same about Rice, who has grown in confidence since Moyes made him club captain at 21 and now swaggers around Wembley with his chest puffed out as if he owns the place.

His displays have been all the more impressive given that he suffered a knee ligament injury on March 31, putting his Euro participation in doubt.

Both players will need to drain the fitness tanks again to keep Italy at bay in the final tomorrow but should they do so, their names will sit deservedly alongside those of Ball, Stiles and rest of the boys of 1966.

REUTERS