England told to abandon possession for crosses against Spain, data shows

England's toughest test demands a different plan

England are about to face the hardest challenge in international football, perhaps at any level of the game: trying to score against Spain. The world champions conceded just a single goal across eight games on their way to winning the World Cup, allowing opponents a mere 2.37 expected goals — an average of just 0.30 per 90 minutes played.

Thomas Tuchel has said he hoped his side “became for 10 minutes more like Spain” to comfortably dominate possession when the heat was on. A fine aspiration for those situations, but it is not an approach that will help England unlock the Spanish backline. The pass masters cannot be toppled that way.

‘Kick the ball into the box and fight’

The solution, it turns out, may lie elsewhere within the same Tuchel press conference. The England manager spoke of how English fans and players prefer chaos. “There is no heritage of: ‘Oh, let’s control around the middle line. Let’s do a deep buildup and then bring them out’,” he said. “It’s just like: ‘Come on. Let’s kick the ball into the opponent’s box and fight with them’.”

And this, the data suggests, is precisely how England can beat Spain. It requires a little more nuance than Tuchel’s simple summation, but not much.

Spain’s two defeats under Luis de la Fuente prove the point

The two defeats Spain have suffered in the Luis de la Fuente era both occurred in the UK and help prove the argument. The first came in Euros qualifying at Hampden Park in March 2023, with Scott McTominay scoring both goals in a 2-0 win for Scotland. “For me, this is not football,” Rodri said after enduring the home side’s combative, time-wasting approach. No, pal, and that is exactly why it worked. Nobody can out-football Spain; alternate methods are required to win.

McTominay’s second goal saw him crash the penalty box to fire home after David García failed to clear a Kieran Tierney cross. When Colombia beat Spain 1-0 in a friendly at the London Stadium 12 months later, it was again a delivery from the left flank which did the damage — Luis Díaz crossing for Daniel Muñoz to score, another moment with a Premier League past-and-present flavour.

The data behind Spain’s defensive wall

These moments carry positive confirmation bias as they occurred in losses for Spain, but they look important because they were. While no side beat them this summer, teams relied on crossing to fashion even vaguely decent opportunities. The stats for the chances they allowed highlight this superbly.

The average value of a shot is 0.1 expected goals — a rule of thumb that holds reasonably steady between competitions. Across 750 minutes this summer, Spain conceded just six chances that Opta deemed to be of greater value. Lowering the bar to 0.07 xG still only finds 10 shots worth more. The eight teams Spain faced had to work for a collective average of 75 minutes for an opportunity with a better than one-in-14 likelihood of becoming a goal. Very hard graft indeed.

It is remarkable that the highest-value shot they allowed in the tournament arrived in the 121st minute of the final. A match Spain utterly dominated might have gone to penalties had Giuliano Simeone fired under the crossbar rather than over it. The move for his chance originated from a corner, as did the cross that presented Cape Verde’s Diney Borges with a 91st-minute opportunity to deliver a titanic upset in Spain’s opening game.

Charles De Ketelaere’s goal for Belgium, the only one Spain conceded at the World Cup, was set up by a Timothy Castagne cross. It was one of four Opta-defined big chances the Spanish allowed — all of them headers, all set up via deliveries from wide areas. Cristiano Ronaldo had a relatively high-value effort in the last-16 Iberian derby after a cross to the back post was headed back towards him in the six-yard box, a better chance than any France produced in the semi-final, where their highest-rated attempt was just 0.06 expected goals from a corner.

Spain’s defenders unaccustomed to aerial threats

Crosses seem to work, at least relatively speaking, perhaps because Spain’s key defensive players are unaccustomed to facing them too often. Pau Cubarsí’s Barcelona conceded the second-fewest crosses per game of the 96 clubs in Europe’s big five leagues last season. Athletic Bilbao, featuring the other two-thirds of Spain’s first-choice combination of goalkeeper and centre-backs — Unai Simón and Aymeric Laporte — were joint-ninth.

Cubarsí and Laporte each contested fewer than four aerial duels per 90 minutes; many centre-backs in the Premier League won, let alone contested, more than that. Balls in the air are a far bigger part of the English game, where “they kick the ball into the opponent’s box and fight with them.” In an age of tactical sophistication, crossing is deemed too inefficient and old-school, leaning heavily on English stereotypes. But we are not plotting the future of the game at St George’s Park — we are trying to see how England score in one match against the meanest defence in international football.

Alexander-Arnold and Kane the unlikely answer

If Trent Alexander-Arnold is keen to get back into Tuchel’s good books, delivering a trademark cross onto the head of Harry Kane against Spain would be a strong starting point. There may be no other way for him or England to prosper against the world champions.