Euro 2024: ‘Why three at the back can bring best out of England’ – Rio Ferdinand – BBC Sport

I won’t be surprised if England switch to playing with three at the back against Switzerland – and it won’t be down to any kind of tactical epiphany from Gareth Southgate, either.

There’s been a lot of talk about this possible change, and how it might be a reaction to their performances so far at these Euros, but Gareth is not the kind of manager to just decide to try something completely different now.

Instead, I would just put it down to who we are playing against and the fact the Swiss will be in the same 3-4-3 shape, which is why he is thinking about matching us up.

Gareth has used this system before too, of course. It took England to the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup and although he mixed things up more at the last Euros, he used three at the back in the final – again, though, that was so we matched up against Italy.

Still, while I don’t think he has come up with a great new plan of how the team should play, there are a few reasons why I feel this system suits our personnel more than the 4-2-3-1 formation we have been using up until now in Germany.

We will have more options on the ball, and it should mean we are more fluid with our movement – especially when it comes to players driving forward and creating overloads.

I said on my podcast before the tournament that England should be playing with four at the back when we are out of possession but three when we have it, with John Stones being the player to change that by coming into midfield when we are on the ball.

It is what Stones does for Manchester City, and he is the best in the world at it – so why not utilise it for England too?

Instead, Gareth has chosen to play a back four in our first four matches and stayed fairly rigid whether we have had the ball or not. We have rarely, if ever, seen Stones make that jump forward.

Because of that, we’ve been really poor at creating situations where we have a spare man, or overload, anywhere on the pitch.

A lot of games nowadays are won that way, through the system being fluid so you can target different areas to overload, but England have not tried it enough.

There have been times when Jude Bellingham has floated out to the left with Phil Foden and Kieran Trippier near him as well – it happened when Foden scored his offside goal against Slovakia – but they have been few and far between.

Because England are not doing it in any set pattern or as a team, we have got to find another way to get those overloads.

It comes down to individuals breaking out, which is what I used to do myself when I brought the ball out of defence, knowing it would bring one of the opposition players out of position and give us a spare man to use in the attack.

As well as Stones, I would like to see Declan Rice trying it further up the pitch as well. When he does it for Arsenal, it opens the game up massively.

We have not really used the wings properly yet at these Euros, which is another way this change in formation might improve things. Again, I feel like we have the players to make it work.

Luke Shaw would be perfect at left wing-back but is unlikely to be fit so I would play Bukayo Saka on that side.

You want to get your best players in the team and Saka grew up playing at left-back, so it is not as if you are asking Phil Foden or Cole Palmer to play there.

I get why Saka would probably rather not play there now, because he has made the right wing his position, but I think if it meant winning the Euros he would play anywhere. If Southgate asks him, he will find out.

On the other flank, we’ve had Kyle Walker at right-back so far, and he is in the team to provide a safety net rather than an attacking threat.

By playing Walker on the right of your back three, you still have the best person possible to deal with attacks down that side, but we can look to the likes of Trent Alexander-Arnold, Kieran Trippier, Saka or even Palmer to do more going forward from out wide.

My only worry if we do play with a back three is that if we take a step backwards like we often do in games, we become a back five.

If that happens, then you don’t see any of the attacking elements that, say, Saka and Trent would bring. Instead you are asking them to stay back, and focus on the weaker part of their game.

There are going to be times when we have got to drop like that, but we have to make sure that we keep the two wing-backs as high as we can. If we do that, then I am all in with this change of shape.

A lot of the criticism England have had so far is because people want to see more creativity and attacking flair, but you cannot just leave the door open at the back.

It is easy to play fantasy football in your head and just think about the talented forward players we have got, but you have to find a balance with the threat that the opposition pose.

At the moment, we are probably too far the other way and appear too defensive-minded for everyone’s liking. We are getting results and, while it is worth reiterating that you can win tournaments playing like this, the best teams always offer more going forward as well.

Real Madrid are a great example of that. On their way to winning the Champions League last season they were happy to sit in and soak up pressure against Manchester City, but they could also explode out of defence and attack with pace on the break.

Imagine if England played the same way, and maybe still went deep at times but then got the ball and were quick and direct and decisive in how we got forward. If we sometimes went up the other end in three or four seconds and got a shot away then the England fans would be going bananas.

That’s what I’d love to see happening at times myself, but instead we are too slow at moving the ball forward and we are not giving our supporters enough excitement.

That’s where I think the disconnection between the fans and the team is coming from, and why everyone is a little bit underwhelmed with what they have seen so far, despite us being in the quarter-finals.

It is easy to pick apart the team and question the way we are playing but I actually still have a feeling we are going to win this tournament.

That comes from the fact that, so far, we have relied on individuals to get us results in games. We know we’ve got players who can keep doing it, too.

Foden was the best player in the Premier League last season, Harry Kane was the top goalscorer in Germany and Jude Bellingham was arguably the outstanding talent in Spain.

So we have got players who can create moments that decide matches at the highest level and, on top of that, we know as a team we have got resilience, character and belief.

We showed that with the way we turned things around so late to get past Slovakia in the last 16, because you don’t get results like that without that mentality.

Even if the team does not click the way we all want it to against Switzerland, we have shown we can drag ourselves through difficult moments. That’s another reason we should all be optimistic about what might happen next.

Rio Ferdinand was speaking to BBC Sport’s Chris Bevan in Berlin.