🇪🇺 Five things we learned from the international break | OneFootball

The final international break of the season has been and gone.

Although qualifying for the World Cup took centre stage, there was plenty of things to ponder ahead of the next time the national teams meet up for the Euros in the summer.

Here is what we learned over the two weeks …

A new Löw for Germany

Well, who saw that coming?

Germany suffering a catastrophic 2-1 defeat at home to North Macedonia, sat 65th in the FIFA world rankings.

A first home World Cup qualifying defeat for the Germans since the 5-1 loss to England in 2001, and it’s hard to argue that this kind of shock hasn’t been knocking on the door for a while.

Although Jogi Löw’s end is in sight, he’ll leave following the Euros, it’s difficult to imagine how Germany will form any kind of assault on the trophy without some dramatic changes between now and June.

It may have all been different if Timo Werner hadn’t missed an open goal from eight yards out …

Too much of a good thing?

The current holders, Portugal, are amongst the favourites to retain their title again this summer and a quick look at their squad tells you why.

Fernando Santos has almost two world class players to choose from in every position but it could be a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth as the 66-year-old now has to try to fit all the attractive pieces into a system that works.

A lack of goal-line technology robbed them of victory in Serbia but Portugal only just scraped past Azerbaijan in their first game before falling behind to minnows Luxembourg on Tuesday.

This situation is in contrast to 2016 where Santos’ side played above the sum of their parts to win the trophy in a solid, structured 4-4-2 formation designed to be disciplined and relying on Cristiano Ronaldo.

Santos has work to do and no more chances to experiment on the pitch.

Disaster lurking

It’s almost like hiring the manager who was sacked by Crystal Palace after just four games (four defeats and no goals scored) to lead your national team was a bad idea.

The Netherlands suffered a shock 4-2 defeat to Turkey in their opening qualifying game before turning it round with wins over Latvia and Gibraltar.

They end this period in second place in the group but it’s hard to get away from this impending sense of doom with the Dutch.

They were abysmal in Istanbul and a backline without Virgil van Dijk looks too easy to play through.

That humbling in Turkey may prove to be the norm, rather than an outlier.

Safety first

We’ve already spoke about the gluttony of options Portugal have at their disposal and the same could be levelled at England boss Gareth Southgate.

The Three Lions don’t have the likes of Trent Alexander-Arnold (dropped) and Jadon Sancho (injury) with them in their current squad and yet still have enough quality in their ranks to take a stab at the latter stages of the Euros.

What this round of fixtures has made clear is that Southgate will likely revert back to 3-5-2 in the big fixtures.

Whether this system is the one to get the best out of the mercurial talents in the England squad is another question.

One of Marcus Rashford, Raheem Sterling or Sancho will start on the bench in the summer while either Jack Grealish or James Maddison, if not both, could be left at home.

England have the ability to blow teams away with their attacking talents, but only if Southgate lets the shackles off.

Dark horses

Italy are unbeaten in 25 games under Roberto Mancini, with 20 of those ending in victory.

He has equalled Marcello Lippi’s longest ever unbeaten run and is closing in on the all-time Azzurri record of 30 games.

They’ve conceded just three goals in their last 15 matches following the 2-0 win over Lithuania on Wednesday.

You can never rule them out, can you?