It is hard now to watch Declan Rice and not remember his interview during the World Cup. “I want to play Champions League,” he said. “For the last two or three years I’ve been saying that. You only get one career. At the end you want to look back at what you’ve won and the biggest games you’ve played in.”
Rice, 23, will not be playing in the Champions League with West Ham United any time soon and it is hard not to think that for the benefit of his game, and indeed for England’s chances of actually winning something, he needs to.
Gareth Southgate had just about finished the announcement of his squad for the World Cup in Qatar when he began bemoaning the lack of true, holding midfielders in the English game — a Sergio Busquets, an Andrea Pirlo, a Joshua Kimmich, a sitting pivot to dictate a game.
“We don’t have that sort of player in this country,” the England manager said. “I don’t think we develop that sort of player well through youth football and through academies. Other countries probably have a little bit more focus on that. We [England] try to find different ways of building from the back to allow us that lack of a playmaking pivot.”
That comment, about the lack of tactical sophistication in the domestic game, sprang to mind in the 94th minute at Elland Road last night. The game was perfectly poised at 2-2 and a point was good for West Ham, moving them out of the relegation zone. Rice, the nearest thing England have to a sitting midfielder, was already soaked in sweat from charging around the pitch for every moment of the match.
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He had been asked to sit, on his own, behind a four-man West Ham midfield, to pivot, to control the match, to protect the heart of his side. Such is Rice’s energy, such is his importance to the team and such is his determination that there feels a permanent desire to throw off the shackles of the role. That is not necessarily good for his own development, and nor is it good for England.
With one minute of added time remaining last night, when the ball went to Tyler Adams just inside the Leeds half, Rice, about 20 yards away, could not resist the temptation to press.
If he were a true pivot, at that state of a game and after his side had lost their previous five matches, he would have retreated, marshalled his midfielders and kept the game in front of him. Instead, he charged after the ball, and Adams, who played the role of a pivot excellently for the USA at the World Cup, moved the ball on. Rice charged back into position. His work in stoppage time alone was tiring.
In the 92nd minute he charged towards Luke Ayling after a ball had been cleared out of the West Ham penalty area, to the Leeds left. In the 93rd minute he charged down the right side of a Leeds attack to jockey and then challenge Ayling again. It was difficult to keep up.
There were seven minutes of normal time remaining when he pinged a free kick from deep inside the West Ham half to the left, a move which finished with Rice on the ball on the edge of the Leeds penalty area, curling a right-footed shot wide of Illan Meslier’s goal. He slapped his hands on the pitch in frustration, apologised to his team-mates and charged back towards his holding position.
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In a team fighting relegation, it is not easy to put the brakes on your best player. By some distance, Rice is the dominant force in David Moyes’s team, but there are two points here: one, the international development of the player is being curtailed to keep West Ham up; and two, he needs a tighter structure with narrower dimensions to his game to develop. In the formative years of training children to play football, they are told to make the pitch big. Rice needs to do the opposite, to manage smaller areas but in much greater detail.
There is speculation about interest from Arsenal. Manchester United and Tottenham would also both improve immediately on his arrival, and he too, from working with managers such as Erik ten Hag and Antonio Conte, who would further refine his game.
At the close at Leeds, his name was sung as he applauded those West Ham supporters who had travelled north, but the sands of his time with them are running out.
