England v Ukraine: Guests can expect no room for friendship as Three Lions work on 'getting the job done better'

Gareth Southgate has spent decades building up his image as one of football's nice guys but in the first game of what might turn out to be his final qualification campaign as England manager there was a harder, more cynical edge to his team.

This England side is not messing about. Ukraine’s qualifying campaign has not even started yet and already Harry Maguire has gone as far as saying not winning next year's European Championship, in Germany, would be a "failure" for the Three Lions.

Southgate is running out of time to go from being the manager of a team of plucky losers to one of real winners. Maybe, given his club struggles, Maguire’s clock is ticking too.

When Jack Grealish failed to put away the chance that would have effectively beaten Italy before half-time, the Three Lions were left to cling on for 45 fraught minutes, even more so once Luke Shaw was shown a red card.

But in truth, England had been time-wasting long before that.

Southgate was part of the side which scrapped its way to World Cup qualification with a 0-0 draw in Italy in October 1997, a game more memorable for Paul Ince's Terry Butcher-style head bandage than the actual football.

Alessandro Del Piero was booked for diving, Angelo Di Livio was sent off for a late tackle on Sol Campbell and Graeme Le Saux claimed he was "rabbit-punched by Alessandro Costacurta".

Not that England were angels either. Even Southgate was booked.

You might say it was a case of when in Rome...

"The British player has been too honest for too long," said Leeds-born midfielder David Batty at full-time. "So we tried what they tried on us and got our share of free-kicks, too. In the end it just really frustrated them."

Southgate's focus was on the result. "They don't come much better than this," he said.

So when he brought his team to Naples a quarter of a century later there was no question of England being a soft touch against the team who beat them on penalties in the European Championship final in 2021, then relegated them from the Nations League the year after.

Only 16 minutes after opening the scoring, Declan Rice was booked for time-wasting, as Kyle Walker and – most damagingly, as it turned out given he would commit a foul seconds later – Shaw would be. Harry Kane delayed the taking of a corner by wriggling back onto the field when injured and at one stage the ball disappeared in England’s dugout. It was that kind of night.

Of course it would be wrong not to acknowledge there was lots of good football too, in a first-half when Rice and Kane gave their side a lead which ought to have been turned into a decisive one by Grealish.

But even if the methods were not, the determination of England to hold out for a 2-1 win over one of world football’s leading nations – who despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, Southgate's men are supposed to be unable to beat – was good to see.

Already England have broken the back of qualification, with two teams reaching the next European Championships out a group which also features Malta and North Macedonia.

England are at home on Sunday, and the last time they played Ukraine, they won 4-0 – their only non-Wembley game (that was in Rome, as it happens) of their nearly-but-not-quite Euros.

Ukraine’s coach, Ruslan Rotan, is only a caretaker, their star player, winger Mykhailo Mudryk, still finding his feet after joining Chelsea in January.

Do not expect any English charity.

Given how hard he has found it getting a game for Manchester United, you might think Maguire would see every cap as a bonus, but the Sheffield-born centre-back is not along for the ride.

“We’re in a good place, we felt like it was in a good place at the World Cup,” he said.

“But these big tournaments are decided on the finest margins, I think we played really well in the World Cup and ultimately, we got knocked out to a good French team.

“However, they’ve proven over the years that they manage to get the job done better than England do.

“So it’s something that we’re working on. But of course, we have to look at our team now and our squad and we have so much talent and so many young players coming through.

“At 30 years-old I’m with a mindset of, ‘if we don’t win the tournament, it’s been a failure’.

“Obviously, we’ve got to qualify first – I mean it’s a tough group – but that’s my mindset. I’ve been at three major tournaments now and I’ve come so close."

If Ukraine expect friendship they will find England have no room for it just now.