England have clearly evolved since Euro 2020, despite clinging on against Italy

If there was a moment that summed up a first half that went about as smoothly as any England fan could have hoped, it came when the half-time whistle blew and Jorginho angrily booted the ball as far as he possibly could.

This is a player who loves to caress the football: to receive, recycle, rinse and repeat. Along with Nicolo Barella and Marco Verratti, he was part of the Italy midfield that ultimately wrestled the most recent European Championship final away from England. But 20 months on from that night, the three of them were struggling, knocked out of their stride, unable to build any kind of rhythm in possession.

England were 2-0 up in Naples, on course for their first away victory over Italy since 1961, and though Harry Kane claimed the headlines as he surpassed Wayne Rooney to become the record goalscorer in the team's history, this was also shaping into a wonderful evening for Declan Rice, Kalvin Phillips and Jude Bellingham in midfield.

In all of England's most traumatic moments over the past couple of decades — against Portugal under Sven-Goran Eriksson in 2004 and 2006, against Croatia under Steve McClaren in 2007, against Germany under Fabio Capello in 2010, against Italy under Roy Hodgson in 2012, against Iceland under Hodgson in 2016, against Croatia in 2018 and against Italy in 2021 under Gareth Southgate — a loss of control in midfield has been a recurring issue.

To see Rice, Phillips and Bellingham winning the battle in the first half last night, against three players who are far more experienced at the highest level, felt like a big step forward. Rice completed 33 passes before half-time — three more than Jorginho, who frequently found Phillips, Bellingham, Bukayo Saka, Jack Grealish or Kane snapping at his heels, and nine more than Verratti. Barella completed just seven passes in that opening 45 minutes.

Bellingham completed only one more than that, but he made his presence felt in other ways, closing down Jorginho and Verratti's passing lanes and then breaking forward when the opportunity allowed, testing goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma to win the corner that led to the opening goal for Rice. He and his team-mates were simply not allowing Jorginho, Verratti and Barella to play on their terms.

But it was a different game in the second half. Within 11 minutes of the restart, Italy had pulled a goal back through Mateo Retegui on his international debut and from that confident, controlling position, England were suddenly clinging on anxiously, particularly after they lost Luke Shaw to a red card in the closing stages for two bookable offences within 54 seconds.

Even after such an uplifting victory, Southgate admitted it was a painful watch after half-time.

As an illustration, England completed 86 per cent of their passes in the first half, 233 to Italy's 182, and had seven attempts on goal. The second half was a different story, the visitors completing just 67 per cent of their passes — 96 to the home side's 259. England lost composure, lost control and didn't have a single shot after the interval.

That they dug deep and held on to win this first group match of 2024 European Championship qualification was impressive, but their mettle was tested because there was such a pronounced difference between the two periods. As has happened so often down the years when they have played one of the leading nations, England struggled to stem the tide once the dynamic of the game changed.

Rice completed just 11 passes in the second half, Phillips eight and Bellingham four before he was replaced as Southgate reshuffled things after Shaw's red card. They just couldn't get on the ball and couldn't seem to give themselves or their defence the breathing space they needed against an Italy team re-energised by Retegui's goal and a series of substitutions.

This might all sound like nit-picking given the qualities that England had to display, at various points, to earn a rare competitive victory against one of the game's traditional heavyweights (even if, to nitpick further, Italy's 2020 European Championship success ended up sandwiched between two failures to qualify for the World Cup).

But this isn't about a grudging assessment of Southgate and his players, who have consistently answered questions that previous England teams have not. It is about their one persistent shortcoming as, having consistently gone deep in tournaments under Southgate, they look to take the decisive final step to putting all those decades of misery and underachievement behind them.

Rewatching that Euro 2020 final before this match only reinforced the feeling that midfield is England's Achilles' heel.

Rice and Phillips were so impressive and assertive for the first half-hour at Wembley, after Shaw's early goal, but then Jorginho and Verratti took control and Southgate and his players found themselves powerless to stem the tide.

From the 34th to the 74th minute of the final, when an exhausted Rice was substituted, he and Phillips completed a combined total of 15 passes to Jorginho's and Verratti's shared 80. There are times when a team will be content to drop deep and let the opposition have the ball, but that July night wasn't a case of playing a rope-a-dope; it was Italy playing exactly as they wished, both before and after Leonardo Bonucci equalised midway through the second half.

This meeting could easily have followed the same path. That it didn't perhaps owed as much due to Italy's post-Euros regression as England's progress over the same period. Bellingham's emergence at the World Cup improved Southgate's team considerably, but it still looks like a midfield in which he, Rice and Phillips will have to excel out of possession to bridge a technical shortfall against the very strongest opponents.

Bellingham, Grealish and Rice celebrate with England record-beaker Kane (Photo: Getty Images)

Shortly after that Euros final, the great Italian midfielder Andrea Pirlo told The Athletic “in England there has never been this kind of player”, by which of course he meant a 'regista' (deep-lying playmaker) like him. “There have been great midfielders over the years with different skills… but you've always had box-to-box midfielders like Frank Lampard.”

In their own different ways, Rice, Philips and Bellingham are more box-to-box action men than registas. They are all accomplished modern players, but none of them is a Pirlo, a Jorginho or a Verratti — or a Xavi, an Andres Iniesta or a Luka Modric — when it comes to controlling possession and dictating the rhythm of a game. We have explored the subject in depth, highlighting how the most technically gifted young English midfielders seem to end up being repurposed further forward — see Phil Foden and Grealish — or, in so many other cases, failing to establish themselves in the Premier League.

The prospect of using Foden in midfield remains tantalising but as Southgate said during the World Cup, it is a notion Pep Guardiola has been reluctant to embrace at Manchester City despite his long-stated enthusiasm for the idea. Last night in Naples was never going to be the time or the place for a trial run, but perhaps, having started it with such a valuable win, Southgate will feel have more scope to experiment as a qualifying campaign that will also see games against North Macedonia, Ukraine and Malta goes on. The same goes for James Maddison, who again found himself watching from the bench.

As it was, Southgate's changes here became more frantic and more reactive.

He introduced Foden to the forward line in the 69th minute, only to replace him with Kieran Trippier 12 minutes later after Shaw's red card. Then came Reece James and Conor Gallagher for Saka and Bellingham, with Southgate switching to 5-3-1 and going into full containment mode; from the 78th minute onwards, England completed just 15 passes.

This could easily have ended up a story of two points dropped from such a commanding position, in which case fingers would certainly have been pointed at Grealish, who was far too casual when picked out by Kane late in the first half; at Harry Maguire, who was twice culpable in the lead-up to Italy's goal; at Shaw, whose uncharacteristic loss of discipline could have cost his team severely; and, inevitably, at Southgate, who continues to attract criticism even while delivering England's best results in years.

“We showed two sides (to the performance), without a doubt,” Southgate said. “We had great control from the back in the first half. We should have had the game buried. It should have been 3-0 at half-time. But then we conceded a really poor goal — several errors in the lead-up to it — and then the whole emotion of the evening changes.”

It did, as did the tempo of the game and the flow of the traffic. And maybe the most critical difference from the Euro 2020 final was that Jorginho and Verratti didn't reach the same heights as they did at Wembley and that, with Federico Chiesa injured and Lorenzo Insigne seemingly out of favour, Italy didn't show enough quality as Kyle Walker and particularly John Stones stood firm in the visiting defence.

“The players can reference that they've had to grind and dig away from home, which is hugely important,” Southgate said. “But equally we would prefer more of the first half than the second.”