Qatar World Cup comment: Anyone booing England as Germany, Argentina and Belgium squirm needs an urgent reality check

The Three Lions had already shown in Qatar they can play much better than they did against a United States of America team that demonstrated far more footballing nous than in blowing themselves out against Wales.

They will certainly need to if they are to progress from the matches that matter at this World Cup.

But England do not have enough stars above their badge to be picky about how they get out of the group, not when you look at some of those fretting about flying home this week.

The winners of this tournament will not string together seven brilliant performances.

Its first week has shown us goals will be hard to come by. A quarter of the knackered teams afforded insufficient preparation time began with goalless draws whilst England put six past an Iran side far more distracted than any team should be at such a career-defining event.

Just as the 6-2 win over Iran showed you cannot read too much into any one game in this slog of a tournament, so did the 0-0 draw with USA.

With games more squashed together than ever, starting with back-to-back victories has proven very difficult indeed. The teams hammered in game one – Iran and Costa Rica – won their second matches.

But unless England lose 4-0 to a limited Wales side, they will get out of their group. Spoiler alert: they will not lose 4-0 to Wales.

Arguably the last time the Welsh scored four against a major footballing nation was when they beat England 4-1 in Wrexham 42 years ago. As England did not qualify for the previous two World Cups, you could quibble it was 1938.

The Wales of 2022 are heavily reliant on two players being asked to prop them up three times in eight days despite Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey’s very limited bit-parts for their clubs this season. They still have flashes of brilliance in their boots, but filling in the gaps in between is the tricky part.

Wales are more than capable of beating England on Tuesday but not blowing them out of the water.

Group-stage struggles are not new.

"We want goals" chanted Wembley as England laboured against Mexico after a dismal 0-0 draw with Uruguay opened the 1966 World Cup. If you need telling how that panned out, you must have clicked on the wrong section of this website.

England scored just two goals and conceded one in 1990’s group stage, but it was forgotten when they reached the semi-finals. Kicking off Euro 96 with a 1-1 draw with Switzerland offered few clues as to the excitement ahead.

The 0-0 draw with Scotland in game two of the last European Championship is the clearest parallel. Whilst many fretted, England got on with reaching the final.

They showed against Iran what a good team they can be, particularly once they have pushed the door open with a goal. This threatens to be a defining tournament for teenage midfielder Jude Bellingham, who scored that day.

But with Qatar and FIFA’s pathetic apologists doing their best to handicap this tournament by throwing politics in the way, this could be a tournament of great shocks and great moments but it is far too bloated and badly-timed to be one of wall-to-wall sustained brilliance. Very few are.

Objectively, 1990 was a pretty dire tournament, and yet most of us England fans who watched it from our living rooms still remember it fondly because our team got to within penalty kicks of the final.

Having been a fan, a player, a scout and a manager, Gareth Southgate understands international tournaments and how to do well in them. It would be nice to think you could win World Cups playing like Brazil in 1982 but if even they could not, what hope the rest of us?

More than most, the circumstances around this controversial competition could play into the hands of deep squads who have been working with their manager for a long time and are well organised defensively.

There will be a time when England need to be, to use Harry Maguire's reflections on the last two tournaments in a pre-World Cup interview, "a bit more brave" and certainly Southgate's apparent reticence over some of his many flair players is the worry going forward.

But if anyone has earnt our trust, it is surely him.

This is a manager who knows better than any of us what he is doing. So before teams like Germany, Argentina and Belgium are squirming in their final games, England will be inked into the last 16.

Anyone who boos that needs an urgent reality check.