Spain vs England preview: England’s ‘Perfect 10’ put into perspective by Spanish talent overload

Roy Hodgson was reflecting on the demise of Stuart Lancaster, whom he had come to know and like on leadership courses: a “very interesting coach and leader,” as he described him. When it was put to the England manager he had escaped Lancaster’s fate after his own disastrous World Cup experience in Brazil last year, despite the two of them sharing a philosophy that draws from the well of young talent, he did not deny his good fortune. “I was more fortunate that the FA kept faith in me at a time when results didn’t go as they should and they could if they wanted to have decided to change course,” Hodgson said. “Stuart wasn’t so lucky...”

From his place of seclusion at St Bees, on the Cumbrian coast, Lancaster would probably counsel Hodgson to beware the end-games of the sporting tournament cycle, because if the youth he has invested in does not deliver in France next summer he, too, will be in a post-employment world – probably touring the garden centres which his wife, Sheila, enjoys. When all’s said and done about England’s so-called Perfect 10 of qualification for next summer’s European Championship – and too much has been said – you look at the respective starting line-ups for tonight’s game with Spain and wonder how Hodgson’s prototype unit, with Ross Barkley starting behind Harry Kane at the top of the team, will cope: either now, or next summer, in France.

Delph, Carrick, Barkley, Lallana, Sterling and Kane versus against Mata, Busquets, Thiago, Iniesta, Fabregas and Costa – to take the possible front sixes of tonight’s teams in Alicante – puts the challenge into a most sobering perspective. There has been talk in Spain of the diminution of the national side, yet seven months out from the European Championship, the gulf between these nations feels overwhelming. Even Hodgson could not resist playing some impromptu fantasy football at the side’s Benidorm base when asked which Spanish player he would pick for his team. “I will veer away from that conservatism I sometimes show and say ‘Iniesta’,” he declared.

Though Wayne Rooney’s absence at the Estadio Jose Rico Perez tonight will lead to a sense that he is no longer an immutable part of the furniture, the claim that Hodgson has vast forward options at his disposal will remain hypothetical until Kane, Jamie Vardy and Barkley actually prove themselves against elite competition. And until Daniel Sturridge, Theo Walcott and Danny Welbeck prove themselves capable of sustained fitness.

Kane’s domestic campaign has offered gratifying proof that he is not a one-season wonder – there have been 22 goals for him now in 2015 – yet even his three in six starts for England come with the qualification that Lithuania (twice), Estonia, Switzerland, San Marino and Italy were the opponents.

Hodgson’s talk also turned yesterday to the subject of Barkley, whose tendency to give the ball away cheaply has been the prime source of the manager’s doubts. His outstanding performances in the last two games against Estonia and Lithuania suggested that the 21-year-old has answered some of the nagging questions. “Every time he has come to us we think he is a bit better, particularly in the last two games,” Hodgson observed, though even the Everton player, with fully 17 caps and three appearances in the World Cup behind him, still provokes as many questions as answers.

Barkley seems made for a deeper-lying midfield position than the advanced one Hodgson has earmarked for him tonight. “He has played that role before, playing off a centre-forward,” Hodgson insisted. “I’ve seen him play for Everton in that position. It’s nothing new to him and it’s a job we think he can do.”

The manager’s deep frustration is that the groin injury sustained by Vardy, the current goalscoring phenomenon of the Premier League, denies him a player he had initially chosen to start at the top of the side tonight. (The idea was that Kane would start against the French next Tuesday, with Rooney behind him.) But a proper look at Vardy against the elite of continental defences must wait for another day.

Even the most experienced of the likely starters, Michael Carrick, remains an enigma to Hodgson. Carrick has played only one and a half games in two years for him, with injuries sustained on three occasions after selection conspiring to prolong the deep frustrations of his difficult England career.

If international football had taken a different course for Carrick, who started his England career way back in 2001 as a 19-year-old, he would be captain in Rooney’s absence tonight.

England have some doubts to confound if they are to alter a desperate trend of tournaments ending badly for the country’s football, cricket and rugby teams, stretching back over 18 months. Hodgson, to his own supreme credit, has chosen to take a very hard road to France, with the Germany and Netherlands friendlies which follow this set of games designed to ensure that no artificial sense of good health is created before next March.

“I don’t see any signs of them wanting anything other than a victory over the mighty Spain,” Hodgson said. “If we don’t get it then it might be because certain aspects of our play need working on. Certain players maybe have not seized their opportunity. Then we will start the analysis from there…” Start as you mean to go on. It is all that he can do.