Before the Nations League began, England’s men’s team would regularly arrange matches against countries from around the world. But friendlies are now relatively rare – England have only played 14 since the 2018 World Cup, compared to 37 in the seven years before then.<\/p>\n
England’s women’s team have enjoyed much more freedom. <\/p>\n
Before the 2019 Women’s World Cup they were able to play 11 friendlies, including testing fixtures against Sweden, Brazil (twice), the USA and Spain. <\/p>\n
Before the 2023 tournament they played nine matches against opponents of different strengths, plus the Finalissima against Brazil.<\/p>\n
They reached the semi-finals in 2019 and the final in 2023.<\/p>\n
So should the men’s team look to organise games against top countries, or versus nations who play in a similar style to their World Cup opponents? <\/p>\n
Ideally, you would do both. Before the 2018 World Cup, England played the Netherlands and Italy (who had failed to qualify) in March before taking on Nigeria and Costa Rica – as direct preparation for group stage games against Tunisia and Panama.<\/p>\n
But England need to weigh up two kinds of preparation, and consider possible knockout opponents too.<\/p>\n
They have not faced a South American team since the 1-0 defeat by Brazil in March 2024.<\/p>\n
And they have not played a team from Asia (discounting a friendly against Australia in October 2023) or Concacaf since matches against Iran and the USA at the 2022 World Cup.<\/p>\n
The draw will be the guide, but Uruguay (ranked 15th) would present the chance to play a team from South America, and be their strongest opponents for two years. Japan, now ranked 19th, are the leading nation in Asia.<\/p>\n
However, you cannot help but wonder if England might be missing a true top-level test before the World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before the Nations League began, England’s men’s team would regularly arrange matches against countries from around the world.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-282802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}