Man Utd's Kobbie Mainoo can help England to find the joy missing from their football

One of the more telling comments of Gareth Southgate’s tenure as England manager came ahead of England’s dour 1-1 draw against Denmark in the group stage, when he told reporters that he only gets “about 45 seconds of enjoyment” out of a match.

“The whistle blows, I cuddle everybody, I walk off the pitch and that's it,” he told the media at a press conference. “I hope [the players] have a little bit longer than that. There should be more joy in it, but that's not my reality."

The cynical England fan might suggest that 45 seconds of pleasure is more than they’ve gotten out of the last five halves of football that the men’s national side has played, and it certainly didn’t look as though any of the players involved were having too much of a laugh as they dropped deeper and deeper and defended their way grimly through two diabolically bland group stage games – and perhaps that’s a part of the problem.

Watching training videos of Manchester United youngster Kobbie Mainoo, who is widely expected to take Conor Gallagher’s place in midfield for the last 16 match against Slovakia on Sunday evening, shows that there is still some joy to be found in the England camp. England’s social media accounts have released a couple of clips of him elegantly dancing his way through his own team-mates and turning Liverpool’s Joe Gomez inside out and back to front with some nimble footwork. Mainoo, probably too young to be jaded by the grind of endless 60 or 70-match seasons just yet, still plays with a smile on his face and the sense that the pressure is optional. But England’s own fans may be his worst enemy should he struggle against Slovakia’s tireless and physical central three.

After the admittedly dire 0-0 draw with Slovenia last week, sections of the travelling support jeered manager and players alike and even hurled a couple of plastic cups in the direction of a stoic but clearly unhappy Southgate. Meanwhile, the pundits have drawn their daggers and social media is full of anger and, inevitably, much worse. The frustration may be justified by the poor performance levels, but there can be little excuse for the strength of the invective, especially given that it can only have a deleterious effect on the players themselves.

Support for any side is only unconditional up to a certain point, of course, and it’s part of the nature of fandom as a whole that supporters will turn on their own players if they perceive a lack of fight or of quality – the problem, of course, is that in an age when players can log on to Twitter after every training session and find out exactly what everyone thinks of them, all the insults have the potential to do far more harm than it did back in the days when an England training camp would be effectively secluded from the world barring a daily phone call home.

And a wrinkle in the ever-strained relationship between England fans and players is the fact that too many people forget that, although the playing staff are indeed paid obscene sums to do a wonderful job that we would all love to have, they are still human beings who function the same way as the rest of us – no matter how hard they work or how focussed they may be, they still need downtime, relaxation and the chance to unplug and unwind.

Another ‘training’ video released by the Three Lions’ social media team probably didn’t have the anticipated response – a simple and silly clip of Declan Rice, Aaron Ramsdale and Kieran Trippier playing a three-man game of scratch cricket, which drew a slew of tedious comments which be summed up with the sentiment that “no wonder they’re rubbish at football if they’re mucking about playing cricket.”

That clip and the response revealed a couple of things – firstly, that Ramsdale wouldn’t last an over at the meanest level of village cricket with that technique, and secondly, that England fans as a whole don’t grasp the need for the players to have a little fun in their lives, even while on duty with the national team.

The pressure of playing for England is, by all accounts, immense, and there are few fanbases who ascribe greater expectations to their team or mete out a more aggressive response when they aren’t met. Fans and pundits are entitled to offer constructive criticism, but that is so rarely the form that it takes, especially in the social media age. We aren’t so very many years removed from effigies of David Beckham being hanged in the street after his red card against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup, and we’re even less removed from Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho being racially abused for missing penalties in the final of Euro 2020.

If England’s fanbase wants to watch their lavishly talented team play with more freedom, confidence and self-expression (fair enough) then they should probably start by giving them the freedom to make mistakes or play poorly without taking a nationwide barracking. Knowing the abuse that they will be on the end of should they be the one who makes the error which costs England the game cannot possibly have any effect other than encouraging each player to be more conservative, more careful, and to be more content to drop deeper and play with less flair and élan.

Mainoo, however, hasn’t had to deal with the consequences of failure yet. He has only been in the senior game for six months or so, and praise for his performances for both club and country have been just about universal. Hopefully, he will be able to play with the same confidence in his talent and willingness to take risks that he demonstrated in those training clips. Certainly, when he came on against Slovenia, he offered more impetus than Gallagher had been able to.

Slovakia’s midfield will work hard to give England’s a tough time. Stanislav Lobotka will probably appear to be everywhere again as though he’s able to teleport across the pitch, Ondrej Duda won’t give any more inches than he did in three Group E games, and Juraj Kucka won’t once take a breather and let his man stroll past him. England’s players are better than Slovakia’s week in and week out, but Slovakia’s are able to play without pressure, knowing that they will likely be heroes to their fans as long as they put a shift in.

England may well need Mainoo’s willingness to flash those quick feet and take his man on – or, perhaps in the second half, they will need Adam Wharton’s vision for a game-breaking forward pass. It would certainly be helpful if their confidence and undented self-belief infected the rest of the squad a little.

The England camp hasn’t solely leant on dodgy displays of cricketing prowess (Declan Rice’s bowling form needs a lot of work) in order to try and keep its players relaxed and, perhaps, distracted from whatever they might find on their phones. There has, according to an entertaining i report, been everything from padel and golf simulators to arguments over the rules of Uno and, rather charmingly, a Lego model of Hogwarts under construction at the hands of Lewis Dunk.

What a significant section of England’s fans needs to grasp is that all of that is beneficial to their football and not a negative. They are not robots and can only train and stay focussed for so long without burnout. Mainoo can express himself on the pitch in part because he hasn’t spent years being beaten down by the brickbats of his own supporters, and in part because he’s given licence to have fun.

Hopefully, that will help him to flourish on Sunday evening and make the midfield spot his own for the rest of the tournament – but if he struggles, let’s hope that he’s given support, understanding, and not encouraged by a wave of vitriol to keep his head down and keep it simple. This England side does that too often already.