When Roy Hodgson walked into the press conference in Lens on Thursday night, he was giddy and it was hard to blame him.
At half-time, England’s ongoing participation in the tournament beyond the group stages looked doubtful. They were booed off the field by England supporters who were ready to turn on the manager and players such as Raheem Sterling.
England were hesitant on the ball and slow to react to danger. They looked like a side who had been told too often about all the bad things that can happen in a game. They looked like a side that had spent a lot of time heeding the warnings of Roy Hodgson.
They were also trying to accommodate the apparently irreversible decline of Wayne Rooney. If England’s manager is always battling his conservative nature – or accepting it – Rooney is still trying to come to terms with his decay.
For 45 minutes, he melted into the background, emerging occasionally to hit a sweet crossfield pass.
One of these sent Wales on the attack when Danny Rose tried to stop it going for a throw but played the ball behind his defenders and sent Chris Coleman’s side charging forward.
This seemed to sum up England’s problem. Other players were frantically scrambling around to allow Rooney to play his way, even though that way brought little benefit to the side. England’s leader couldn’t lead and the manager would never confront the key problems.
Wales had done little, which is to say they found it hard to get Gareth Bale into the game, until Rooney gave away a needless foul, and the Welsh captain drove a free kick past the wall which Joe Hart fumbled and the ball rolled into the net.
Hodgson’s actions at half-time may be the most important decisions he has made during his time as England manager.
Two years ago, he had benefited from England’s decision to try to break old habits. Despite picking up only one point at the World Cup, they wouldn’t turn on the manager after a disappointing tournament. They would trust that the future he was building towards was worth it.
After 45 minutes here in Lens, that looked like a terrible decision. The future had arrived and it looked depressingly familiar.
For this game, Hodgson had picked the same team that had drawn with Russia in Marseille, but he probably won’t pick that team again after the impact Jamie Vardy and Daniel Sturridge had on the second half.
At half-time, Hodgson acted and everything changed. Hodgson may be more conservative than most, but he is not the only England manager to struggle in this way.
Roy Hodgson – "I'm not a great statistics person, I don't even trust them, but we were on the ball so much today."
— Dion Fanning (@dionfanning) June 16, 2016
In the same stadium in 1998, Glenn Hoddle finally relented and selected David Beckham and Michael Owen for England’s final group game against Colombia.
It changed the mood of the team and they may have gone further in the competition had Beckham not swung a leg at Diego Simeone in the next game.
Hodgson may have landed on something similar during his moment of desperation. Afterwards he was asked if it was the greatest double substitution of his career and he resisted, as always, the temptation to let the rhetoric soar.
“When you’ve been in football a long time, you find it hard to remember. It’s certainly my best double substitution of these Euros.”
Hodgson had, however, escaped. Results are often all that matter. This is something England’s manager occasionally dolefully points out, so he may be entitled to take credit for the changes, even if the victory didn’t come about until Sturridge scored in injury-time.
But he did score after a second half in which England seemed to be shaking off some of the caution and fear. Rooney was a different player in the second half, although he benefited from the lack of adventure from Wales who, once Vardy equalised, wanted to hang on for a draw.
“We are happy with the composure he brings to the team, with the calmness at times when it gets a bit frantic chasing an equaliser or a winner,” Hodgson said of his captain. “His long cross-field passes have always been a feature of his game. He’s had that ability.”
Hodgson and Rooney will almost certainly move on to the knockout stages now, but Hodgson will have to embrace a side whose instincts seem alien to him.
Vardy and Sturridge are different players and different personalities, but they both play without concern for the bad things that can happen on a field.
Vardy, after his years struggling to reach this level, is not going to allow anyone to stop him taking these chances. Sturridge can be casual, but that relaxed nature is necessary if he is going to score the kind of goals he does.
Afterwards Hodgson insisted that the players he had picked to start the game had been selected because they played well against Russia, but some of those like Sterling might not start when it matters again.
If England are to do well, Hodgson needs to embrace the change he witnessed in the second half, when England looked like the side they were promising to be some time in the future.
During his press conference, Hodgson was asked about his former player Marcel Koller who is now manager of Switzerland. After a result like that, Hodgson felt young and he went on a digression, joking about how if he stays away from mirrors he can avoid being reminded that he is no longer 40.
“In my head, I’ll always be 40,” he said. If Hodgson can shake off all he has come to believe in the years that have passed since, then England will still have a chance in this competition.
