Ordinarily, I try not to correlate too much between a player’s Arsenal performances and his National Team performances. Due to the lack of time together and the inability to buy the players that you need, international teams are nowhere near as functional as club sides. International football is, if not a different sport, a different version of the sport.
Not least because football is a team game and partnerships and combinations are like chemical reactions. If one piece moves or withdraws, that has a chain reaction on the players around them. In an England sense, for example, the team has transitioned away from three of the partnerships that have defined Gareth Southgate’s reign.
Harry Maguire and John Stones at centre-half has been ably replaced by Guehi and Stones but elsewhere there have been teething problems. Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips was a very well established partnership in central midfield and with Phillips growing stale on Manchester City’s bench, it took Southgate a while to find a balancing chemical for Rice’s tirelessness.
Likewise, without Raheem Sterling’s centre-forward style runs, Harry Kane’s proclivity to drop into deep spaces has looked laboured- especially as Phil Foden and Jude Bellingham like to occupy those same spaces and Kane looks unwilling or unable to adapt to that for his team.
For Bukayo Saka, none of these combining factors appear to affect him. He doesn’t seem to need certain players around him or certain types of player around him. Just put him on the right and watch him do his thing regardless of who is in his vicinity when he does it.
I think England’s midfield struggles have told us something about Declan Rice that I think Mikel Arteta learned around half-way through last season. It became increasingly clear that he is the Granit Xhaka replacement, as opposed to the ‘six.’ Don’t get me wrong, he is perfectly capable of playing ‘in the six’ and I am sure we will see him there from time to time…
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/07/how-to-grow-declan-rice/
Author : Tim Stillman
Publish date : 2024-07-11 12:00:56
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