Star boy Saka’s reliability makes him rock for England and Southgate

Gareth Southgate had little choice but to ask Bukayo Saka to take up a position he hadn’t played in for more than three years on Sunday.Gareth Southgate had little choice but to ask Bukayo Saka to take up a position he hadn’t played in for more than three years on Sunday.eclan Rice is the guy who has to break the news. It’s a good choice. Instinctively Rice feels like the kind of guy who you want breaking bad news.

First test: a big surging run by David Strelec down the centre, into his space. Instinctively he tracks it, remembers the winger behind him, backpedals, remembers something called the offside trap, wheels back around to the left to maintain the line. Trippier trots back on to the field. Saka returns to the right. Before he can get there, Trippier is substituted. Saka returns to the left. So much for Southgate not having a Plan B: over the last hour of this game, he unveils about a dozen of them.

And in a team this lawless and unstable, this in itself begins to take on an outsized importance. When you consider that Saka has done most of his development under the intense, diamond-precision of Mikel Arteta, this is almost certainly the least structured, most shambolic team he has ever played in as a professional. He hasn’t set the world alight. But you can at least trust him to be where he is supposed to be.

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