Tour de France champion Geraint Thomas has signed a new three-year contract with Team Sky.

The 32-year-old Welshman, whose deal was due to expire at the end of 2018, had offers from other teams.

But the double Olympic gold medallist has signed a contract on improved terms with Sky.

Thomas revealed in 2017 he would listen to offers from other teams, and his Tour de France triumph this summer heightened interest in the rider.

The new Polish-sponsored CCC WorldTour team made him an offer, with sports director Piotr Wadecki saying he wants to build his Tour de France team around Thomas.

Although his position as team leader is not certain, Team Sky principal Sir Dave Brailsford had been “pretty positive” his fellow Welshman would stay.

The Cardiff-born rider has said he would not have any problems about working alongside four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome, who he expects to be desperate to regain his crown next year.

Great Britain’s Rachel Atherton won the women’s downhill final at the mountain bike World Championships in Switzerland to claim the title for a fifth time.

Atherton, who earned a record sixth World Cup title in August, was nearly 10 seconds faster than compatriot Tahnee Seagrave, who was second.

“I just went for it,” said Atherton. “It’s been a pretty crazy year.

“There were a couple of sections where I nearly went down. I’m just glad I stayed on the bike.”

Myriam Nicole of France finished third in the race in Lenzerheide.

Corrections and clarifications: In an earlier version of this story, an incident at the 2009 US Open involving Serena Williams was attributed to a different round. Williams threatened a line judge in a semifinal.

Instead of having the greatest triumph of her career, Serena Williams had her ugliest moment.

And she has herself to blame.

Williams melted down in stunning fashion at the US Open final Saturday afternoon with a tantrum over repeated code violations. It diminished her, helped cost her a record 24th Grand Slam title and, worst of all, robbed Naomi Osaka of the spotlight she so richly deserved for winning her first title.

Williams likes to pride herself on being a role model, the elder stateswoman not just of her game but in all of sports. Yet as Williams repeatedly berated chair umpire Carlos Ramos, calling him a thief and demanding he apologize to her, she looked anything but.

You can believe that Ramos overreached in assessing Williams her second and third penalties, which cost her a point and then a game in the second set. You can also believe that Williams overreacted, losing control of her emotions in a match in which she was already frustrated.

MORE FROM THE US OPEN

Williams did redeem herself after the match, imploring the crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium to stop booing and celebrate Osaka’s win.

“Let’s make this the best moment we can,” she said. “Let’s give everyone the credit where credit’s due.”

By then, however, it was too late. She needed to be bigger during the match. She needed to be better.

She needed to handle herself like the champion she is.

To be fair, Williams was right to be angry about the initial code violation, for coaching from the stands. It was assessed in the second game of the second set after Ramos saw Patrick Mouratoglou put up both his thumbs and move his hands back and forth, as if telling Williams to go to the net.

While Mouratoglou acknowledged after the match that he was coaching, the same could be said for every other coach on the tour. Nobody adheres to the rule, and umpires rarely — if ever — call it.

It’s also not even clear that Williams realized what Mouratoglou was doing. She told Ramos right away she doesn’t use coaching, and said she thought Mouratoglou was simply giving her a thumbs-up.  

“Just because I look at my box — it may have looked like I was getting coaching, but I’m telling you, that’s not what I do,” said Williams, who said she and Mouratoglou don’t even have hand signals. “I said, `I’d rather lose than have to cheat to win. I don’t need to cheat to win. I’ve won enough. That’s never been something I’ve ever done.’ ”

Williams also was right in saying men on tour have done and said far worse and not been penalized. Dominic Thiem smashed his racket earlier in the US Open, and was celebrated because he gave it to a fan. How many times has Nick Kyrgios cursed at umpires? Just this year?  

Yet Williams was given a second code violation for smashing her racket, costing her a point. When Ramos gave her a third violation, for continuing to berate him, it cost her a game.

“I’ve seen other men call other umpires several things,” Williams said after the match. “For him to take a game, it made me feel like it was a sexist remark. He never took a game from a man because he said `thief.’

“I just feel like the fact I have to go through this is just an example for the next person that has emotions and wants to express themselves and they want to be a strong woman,” Williams added. “And they’re going to be allowed to do that because of today.

“Maybe it didn’t work out for me, but it’s going to work out for the next person.”

But while Williams might have been right in her indignation, she was flat out wrong in how she expressed it. And just because other people do it, doesn’t make it right.  

Had this been the first time Williams behaved like this, maybe it would be viewed differently. But it wasn’t. Williams lost the 2009 US Open semifinal when she was assessed a point penalty on match point for threatening to shove a ball down a line judge’s throat.

It’s understandable that Williams’ emotions were high Saturday. She has overcome so much in the past year, and winning her 24th Grand Slam title to tie Margaret Court for the all-time record would have been the exclamation point on a comeback that’s been as inspiring as it is amazing.

But that doesn’t excuse her meltdown.

Williams is a tremendous champion, and will rightly be remembered as such. But on this day, she fell short.

In more ways than one. 

***

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour. 

 

WASHINGTON – Porn star Stormy Daniels and her brash attorney Michael Avenatti have for months been a leading force of resistance against the president. 

The whole saga started with Daniels signing a nondisclosure agreement to stay silent about an alleged affair with President Donald Trump, just days before the 2016 election. Daniels hired Avenatti and the pair started their legal battle in March by filing a lawsuit seeking to be freed from the agreement. 

Both immediately generated headlines. Avenatti became a prominent fixture on cable news and is now even considering running against Trump for president. Daniels appeared on Saturday Night Live, was awarded a key to a California city and enjoyed boosted profits from her appearances at strip clubs across the country. 

And now, it would seem that both have won their lawsuit. Trump and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, appeared to distance themselves from the agreement in a pair of court filings on Friday and Saturday, agreeing the nondisclosure should be tossed. 

Cohen said he wanted to dissolve the accord, be repaid the $130,000 he originally gave Daniels in exchange for her silence and have the case dropped. Trump’s lawyers said they have no intent to enforce the agreement and agreed it was void.  

But Avenatti says he won’t accept their offers.

“My client and I will never settle the cases absent full disclosure and accountability,” he said. “We are committed to the truth. And we are committed to delivering it to the American people.”

Here’s why Avenatti is resistant and what all of this could mean: 

What happens next?

So what happens now? Well, like many legal things, it’s convoluted. When Daniels first filed her lawsuit, the primary goal was to have the hush agreement declared null and void by a judge. But that has changed over time. 

The lawsuit was amended and the complaint now includes claims Cohen defamed Daniels. Several other separate cases have also been filed, including a defamation lawsuit against the president and suit alleging Cohen and Daniels’ former attorney, Keith Davidson, conspired together against her. 

Avenatti’s grand plan includes deposing the president and Cohen in a courtroom about what they knew about the agreement and others like it. 

A legal expert says the strongest case in the legal web pertained to this nondisclosure agreement. Renato Mariotti, a Chicago-based defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said Avenatti’s odds of deposing the president dropped with the back-to-back filings by Trump and Cohen, which could lead to the case being dismissed altogether. 

Avenatti pushed back against the back-to-back filings and said after Cohen’s court filing that he didn’t have to accept the offer to toss out the hush agreement and said he and Daniels “will never settle the cases absent full disclosure and accountability.”

But Avenatti might not have much of a choice if a judge agrees to dismiss the case. 

“The rest of their [Daniels’] argument is pretty weak so what I think their [Trump and Cohen’s] legal strategy is, it’s to basically say ‘let’s moot out these contract claims and go forward on the weaker claims,’” Mariotti said, adding the idea of dissolving the bulk of the case could win favor with the judge presiding over the case and increase the probability of the case being dropped. 

“It’s certainly a coordinated effort between both defendants and that doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “But this is what they should have done from the beginning. If they had, it’s possible this wouldn’t have become such a big problem.” 

Not backing down 

Avenatti told USA TODAY he has no plans of backing down from the case and said efforts by Trump and Cohen were “going nowhere,” rather just failed attempts to stall the case. 

“This is just sloppy lawyers and more desperation by Mr. Cohen and Trump trying to avoid my questions,” Avenatti said. 

He pointed to the defamation claim in the lawsuit and the other cases that he and Daniels have filed surrounding the issue. So, regardless of how a court views the offers from Trump and Cohen to drop efforts to enforce the agreement, Avenatti has other possible legal routes to pursue the president and a possible deposition. 

“This is just one aspect and one claim of many we’ve filed,” Avenatti said, adding he planned to file a response to Trump and Cohen shortly. 

Contributing: Associated Press

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Mo Farah won a record fifth Great North Run in a course record of 59 minutes and 26 seconds on Sunday in Newcastle.

It was also Farah’s fifth win in a row in the race, with New Zealand’s Jake Robertson 31 seconds back in second.

London Marathon champion Vivian Cheruiyot from Kenya won the women’s race for a second time in three years.

David Weir set a new course record to win the men’s wheelchair race for the seventh time, with Martyna Snopek taking the women’s race.

Farah narrowly missed out on his half marathon personal best, finishing four seconds outside it after fading inside the final 200m, having pulled clear of Robertson with about two miles to go.

Robertson, who finished a close second to Farah last year, clocked 59:57, with Belgium’s Bashir Abdi third in 60:43.

“Training’s different now as I’m not in the track season, I’ve been doing a lot more long runs and in terms of endurance I’m definitely fitter,” said four-time Olympic champion Farah.

“Just coming into that headwind it was so tough, I wasn’t going smooth, I was going up and down. I honestly thought I could beat my personal best today, but those last two miles really hurt.”

Olympic and world champion Cheruiyot posted a personal best of 67:43 to win the women’s race ahead of compatriots Brigid Kosgei (67:52) and Joyciline Jepkosgei (68.10).

Weir won the men’s wheelchair race in 41:19, with Snopek clocking 63:02 to win the women’s race.

Edie Widder sat quietly in the dark for half an hour.

All around her, critters floated and glided by as she peered through the thick glass bubble of a submersible, perched on a rocky ledge nearly 2,000 feet under the sea. 

Everywhere, the creatures glowed.

“It was like an incredible starfield sky,” said Widder, the marine scientist who famously attracted a legendary giant squid to the same deep sea submarine, six years earlier. “It was all of these little frothy lengths of luminescence that lit up all around us, and above us.”

That August evening, Widder descended down to these depths off the Eastern Bahamas not to seek out any enormous tentacled creatures, but to watch the sea glow.  

When the submersible — piloted by deep ocean explorers OceanX — has its radiant lights turned on, they illuminate what often looks like snow in different parts of the sea. In some places, “there’s a steady rain, a blizzard of marine snow,” said Widder. 

Of course, it’s different than snow on the surface. Though it looks similar in the light, these snowy particles are not made of frozen water, but of things both alive and dead: tiny, decomposing organisms (plankton), their waste, collections of bacteria, and balls of slime holding this stuff together. It’s all gradually sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Above: The OceanX submersible descends past flurries of marine snow. Credit: Edie Widder

“In a sense, they’re like a little galaxy of their own in a huge enormous universe of the ocean,” Andrew McDonnell, an oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who also researches ocean snow, said in an interview. “Each one is made up of lots of living parts.”

But the 67-year-old Widder is interested in the glowing kind. She wants to know what’s exactly producing these cosmic glows in the deep sea, and why. This interest, however, has advanced well beyond an ordinary research endeavor. Widder calls it a growing “obsession.”

“I believe a significant portion of the marine snow is bioluminescent,” she said. “I certainly want to know the answer before I die.”

“It’s my Moby Dick,” she added.

A world dependent on snow

Glowing or not, marine snow is found in oceans everywhere, though in varying amounts. The particles’ slow descent to the darkest recesses of oceans worldwide are crucial for the planet — and the life down there.

There’s no sunshine or sprouting plants in this nighttime world, so the creatures here must depend on what falls down from above.

“Everything is waiting for stuff to come down, whether a dead whale or a marine snowflake,” Rainer Kiko, a marine scientist specializing in plankton and marine snow research at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, said in an interview. 

“It’s my Moby Dick”

“It’s critical to all deep sea life — it’s the fuel that feeds the deep sea,” added Widder. 

But the surface world is, unwittingly, also heavily dependent upon marine snow. Near the ocean’s surface, the water is teeming with tiny photosynthetic floating critters, known as phytoplankton. They’re responsible for creating nearly all the oxygen on Earth, and become visible during massive blooms, some of which glow.

Image: Meghan Gilbert/Cape Eleuthera Island School

They suck carbon from the air throughout their lives, and when they die, their bodies, composed largely of carbon, sink. It’s the natural way the oceans help regulate the planet’s climate, by trapping carbon down in the ocean depths. 

“Without this process — what we call the biological carbon pump — the concentration of carbon dioxide would be about double what it is today,” said McDonnell. “It’s naturally doing the Earth this giant favor of storing carbon deep in the ocean.”

In fact, the oceans contain 50 times the amount of carbon than the atmosphere. The snow that falls to the lightless ocean depths at 1,000 meters will likely “be gone for more than 1,000 years,” said Kiko. 

And if the snow falls all the way down to the ocean floor, becoming absorbed in the muddy sediments, “it will be gone much longer,” he added.

<img class="" data-credit-name="Credit: Andrew McDonnell, University of Alaska Fairbanks
” data-credit-provider=”custom type” data-caption=”A close-up image of sinking marine snow and fecal pellets in the Bering Sea.” title=”A close-up image of sinking marine snow and fecal pellets in the Bering Sea.” src=”https://i.amz.mshcdn.com/pDclNHVQ7YZT_yG7bifsPCbSAjs=/fit-in/1200×9600/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F842269%2F9fef2bff-e8f8-40da-9d71-676ede12aaf4.jpg&#8221; alt=”A close-up image of sinking marine snow and fecal pellets in the Bering Sea.” data-fragment=”m!c713″ data-image=”https://ift.tt/2MdcHUo; data-micro=”1″>

Image: Credit: Andrew McDonnell, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Mysterious glow 

As critical as marine snow is to a stable planet and thriving deep sea world, much remains unknown.

Each particle can be a completely different world, or galaxy, as McDonnell put it. Upon closer inspection, they can look like snowflakes, a simple round dot, elongated cylinders, or all of these stuck together in one slimy clump. 

“It’s still a big mystery,” McDonnell said, noting that each of their exact fates is another quandary. 

Image: Meghan Gilbert, Cape Eleuthera Island School

What is known, however, is that marine snow flourishes in certain oceans, such as near the equator in the Pacific and Atlantic.

“We saw an amazing equatorial snowfall of particles,” said Kiko, who like McDonnell uses a deep sea camera to capture images of marine snow. Some of this abundance is easily explainable, like places where cold, nutrient-rich water often wells up to the surface and sustains lots of life — life that ultimately dies, and sinks. 

But what’s not explainable — and perhaps the greatest mystery of all — is why some marine snow glows. Widder has been considering the glow for decades.

“I’ve spent so much of my career sitting in the dark,” said Widder. “I’ve probably seen it more than anyone else.”

Credit: NOAA

A compelling idea is that bioluminescent bacteria, as part of the community inhabiting a snow particle ecosystem, glows to attract other creatures. In the dark, the creatures munch on the marine snow, and in doing so, the bacteria flourishes inside the nutrient-rich creature. This works well for everyone — the consumer and the consumed.

“We’re talking about a pretty important aspect of survival,” said Widder. “If your food lights up, that could be very useful.” 

Yet, even trying to observe the glow happening on a particular snow particle has been trying. Over several night dives in the OceanX submersible, Widder studied the cryptic glow, but next hopes to capture the glowing particles with a high-resolution camera. But getting a tiny glowing particle into the frame isn’t easy.

“It’s super, super difficult,” said Widder. 

Even the tiny structure that actually does the glowing remains a mystery to Widder, who describes it as seemingly taking the shape of a tiny bottle brush flower, with specks of light at the end of the filaments. 

Image: flicker user Rojer

“I’m at a complete loss as to why it has the apparent structure that it has,” she said. 

Other scientists have tried to glimpse the glowing particles before. But many snow particles can be pretty small, translucent, and nearly imperceptible. 

And that, said Widder, makes the glowing snow all the more difficult to grasp, and yet all the more intriguing.

“You’re talking about fairy dust here,” she said.

Thomas Maresca, Special to USA TODAY
Published 4:56 a.m. ET Sept. 9, 2018 | Updated 7:00 a.m. ET Sept. 9, 2018

SEOUL – North Korea held a military parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its founding on Sunday but refrained from displaying its long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles or mentioning its nuclear program amidst a period of diplomatic negotiations with the United States and South Korea.

In previous years, the parade has been a showcase for Pyongyang’s latest weapons technology, but this year the event had a less bellicose tone, according to reports from foreign journalists invited to cover it.

Thousands of goose-stepping troops marched through Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square before crowds waving brightly colored plastic bouquets of flowers, according to the Associated Press. Tanks and shorter-range weapons were on display, but none of the long-range missiles with the capacity to strike targets in the continental U.S. were seen.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was on hand but did not address the crowd. He reviewed the procession from a balcony over Kim Il Sung Square alongside senior officials and foreign envoys including Li Zhanshu, a member of China’s Politburo Standing Committee who is number three in Beijing’s power hierarchy.  

Kim Yong Nam, head of North Korea’s parliament, delivered a speech that focused mainly on economic development, according to CNN.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has accelerated economic reforms since coming to power in 2011, and this year, in particular, he has emphasized developing North Korea’s economy. In April, he announced that North Korea would be ending its policy of dual-track development of both nuclear weapons and economic growth and instead would “focus all of its energy on building a socialist economy.”

Other foreign dignitaries on hand included Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, who told the Russian news agency RIA that Kim Jong Un confirmed his intention to visit Russia. The North Korean leader “wants peace,” she was quoted as saying.

Also viewing the parade was French actor Gerard Depardieu, who was spotted by journalists from the Agence France-Presse news agency.

The parade comes as North Korea and the United States appear to be at an impasse over negotiations concerning North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. A June summit in Singapore between Kim Jong Un and President Trump produced an agreement pledging “to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” but failed to provide a roadmap for how that might work.

North Korea wants a peace declaration officially ending the Korean War and relief from punishing international sanctions but the United States has held firm on its demands for complete denuclearization first. Hostilities in the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice after three years of brutal conflict that claimed the lives of nearly 3 million soldiers and civilians, including more than 36,000 Americans, but no peace treaty has been signed.

“We believe that denuclearization has to take place before we get to other parts,” State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters on Wednesday.

Nevertheless, Kim Jong Un expressed “unwavering trust for President Trump” and said that he wants to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula before the end of Trump’s first term, according to South Korean special envoy Chung Eun-yong after a meeting with Kim in Pyongyang.

Trump thanked Kim for his sentiment on Twitter, adding: “We will get it done together!”

On Saturday, the State Department confirmed that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo received a personal letter from Kim for Trump, which the president had said he believes will be “positive” in tone.

Seoul has also been strongly pushing for closer diplomatic and economic ties with Pyongyang, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will be meeting Kim Jong Un for a third time on September 18-20. President Moon said on Friday that he will be seeking “irrevocable progress” in efforts to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons by the end of this year at the summit, which will be held in Pyongyang.

North Korea was also scheduled to hold its first Mass Games spectacle in five years on Sunday. The event in the past has a with enormous choreographed propaganda displays and large-scale performances of up to 100,000 synchronized gymnasts and dancers.

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TORONTO – Midnight is always the right time to freak out festival audiences.

Late Saturday night “Halloween” screened its epic, bloody finale at the Toronto International Film Festival, an event that also welcomed its star Jamie Lee Curtis to the stage 40 years after her original film hit theaters.

A masked Michael Myers was also there, creeping out an electrified festival crowd by appearing in the shadows on stage before the first frame rolled.

This “Halloween” (in theaters Oct. 19) extends the freaky franchise to a new generation. Laurie Strode (Curtis) is now a grandmother who has alienated her daughter (Judy Greer) and granddaughter (Virgina Gardner) with her extreme overprotection. Michael is in a high-security prison, they argue. It’s time to let the past go. 

That’s before the serial killer breaks out and launches a fresh massacre that got the Toronto audience alternately cheering and shrieking.

‘Halloween’: Jamie Lee Curtis’ horror heroine returns in time for ‘the year of the woman’

“It’s a movie about trauma,” said Curtis during the 2 a.m. Q&A that followed the screening. “And ultimately, if any of you have ever lived through any trauma or have a family member who has trauma, it isn’t just you or the family member (who are affected), it is generational…I just thought it was an amazing way to tell the story of Laurie and tell it through the eyes of her daughter and her granddaughter.”

“I feel traumatized right now,” cracked Greer, who had just watched “Halloween” for the first time in the audience. “I’m shaking!”

So what did critics think of the latest installment? Reaction was mostly positive – with just a few reviewers digging in the shiv.

Collider reporter Perri Nemiroff raved, calling it “vicious” and “the complete package.”

Film critic Scott Menzel declared it “the best Halloween since the original” and called the horror film “a total blast.”

Atlantic writer David Sims was a bit more cautious, calling “Halloween “good when it’s just being a tense slasher film, grating when it’s winking at the audience, but David Gordon Green can certainly rack up tension. As an homage it’s excellent, as its own movie it’s ok.”

Uproxx reporter Mike Ryan was less than impressed. “The new HALLOWEEN starts with an interesting premise. The ending is good. The rest was really disappointing,” he tweeted.

Rotten Tomatoes editor in chief Joel Meares declared the filmmakers “nailed it,” saying “Halloween” delivers “Force Awakens levels of fan service.”

Vanity Fair’s Emma Stefansky agreed with the “Star Wars” comparison.

“HALLOWEEN is THE FORCE AWAKENS of HALLOWEEN movies: all the stuff you want, plus some new stuff, some dumb stuff, some delightfully remixed stuff. definitely the best time I’ve had at a (Toronto) screening thus far,” she wrote.

Entertainment reporter Jeff Sneider also thought the new “Halloween” is the best installment since the original, calling the horror flick “legit scary.”

But leave it to Curtis to get the final laugh of the night. When asked by an audience member if she’s ever scared, or has been affected by playing Laurie, the actress gave a nod to the current state of Washington politics. “You know, life’s a little scary. I live in America,” she cracked. “This (expletive’s) getting real, so I’m scared every day.”

 

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England manager Gareth Southgate was in realistic mood before this opening Uefa Nations League meeting with Spain – refusing to put any gloss on what he described as their “non-existent” record against the world’s best.

It did not get any better in this 2-1 defeat and if there was a night designed to illustrate Southgate’s point and put England’s current place in the global order into perspective – despite that run to the World Cup semi-final – this was it right here at Wembley.

England and Southgate were never labouring under any delusions of grandeur despite the euphoria of the summer in Russia and anyone who was received the coldest of showers as Spain demonstrated vast superiority despite recent problems of their own.

Spain may have dropped below England in the Fifa rankings since the World Cup, they are now ninth to England’s sixth, but under new coach Luis Enrique they were by far the more accomplished team for long periods, inflicting a brutal reality check on the progress Southgate’s side has made.

Southgate said: “We are under no illusions. We are still at the early stages of what we want to do. This was a tough test in terms of pressing and a team who are so good in possession.

“We have to keep reviewing and looking at what we do but we want to stick to the plan and get better at what we do.”

England received the perfect start with Marcus Rashford’s goal but this only served to jolt Spain, in transition themselves after a chaotic World Cup which saw coach Julen Lopetegui sacked on the eve of the tournament after taking the Real Madrid job, into action.

Spain equalised instantly through Saul Niguez and proceeded to show a control and creation England simply could not match, with sharp and crisp passing and movement that frustrated Southgate’s side and a Wembley crowd that had come to celebrate that World Cup achievement.

The Russian odyssey around Volgograd, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Moscow and Samara may have elevated the status of Southgate and England – but it was right back down to earth on home soil.

England were not lacking in effort. They were lacking in quality. There were spells within this game when they were outclassed by a Spain side trying to find their own path back to success.

Southgate knows England need a statement victory. For all the goodwill of the summer they came up short against a side of Belguim’s quality either side of that semi-final loss to Croatia.

And even though they staged a late siege of sorts, when Spain fell back to protect the result and England applied some old-fashioned long-ball pressure, they rarely looked like getting it on this occasion.

England, who are undoubtedly in a position to make progress under Southgate, are hammering at the glass ceiling put in place by superior opposition and currently do not possess the quality or the street-wisdom to break through it.

This is not the Spain of old, the Spain of Xavi and Andres Iniesta. It is a Spain under renewal after their golden era – but they still possessed too much for England on a chastening night at Wembley.

Southgate’s midfield has no answers

Southgate has many of the building blocks in place to renovate England as he attempts to build on the platform established by the World Cup – but one crucial piece is missing and shows no sign of being uncovered.

England simply do not have the creator or the class in midfield that allows them to dictate terms and control games against the best.

We saw it in Russia in those defeats to Belgium. We saw it painfully in the semi-final against Croatia when Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic were the great orchestrators of tempo and rhythm, manipulators of the ball in the crucial phases in Moscow.

And we saw it again at Wembley as England’s midfield was all endeavour but non-existent when it came to creativity.

Tunisia, Panama, Colombia – albeit on penalties – and Sweden are well within England’s compass but the best remain out of reach. This is not criticism. This is cold fact.

Southgate said: “They pressed us and we didn’t keep the ball well enough but I have to give the players credit. We could have folded and disappeared but in the last 25 minutes we could have got a draw.

“They pressed well and it took us a bit of time to work out where that was coming from and find solutions to it. We are still finding our feet in playing out. We can go back to an old style but we will never be a top team or we can stick with what we are doing and accept it won’t always work.

“The system in Spain has produced some of the best midfielders in the world. We are a different profile of player. We can’t play like they do but we can move the ball. When we are match fitter we will function better higher up the pitch. It takes time. We have come a long way.”

It was revelatory that England’s best successes came with a more back to basics approach than trying to play Spain at their own passing game.

Southgate’s search for a creative midfield force is a matter of urgency but he cannot conjure this up out of thin air.

Jordan Henderson is a midfield pivot but he not a creator at international level and when Southgate replaced him after 63 minutes it was with Eric Dier, hardly a game-changer.

Ruben Loftus-Cheek has shown potential but only in flashes and he gets no game time at Chelsea. Newcastle United’s Jonjo Shelvey has his admirers but is hardly the name to make the world’s best break out in a cold sweat.

Manchester City’s Phil Foden is marked out for a golden future but he cannot be expected to carry such a weighty burden at just 18.

Southgate tried to offer more creativity by using Henderson as the foundation with Dele Alli and Jesse Lingard as the more attack-minded players but Belgium, Croatia and Spain have put their flaws into sharp relief.

England need the midfield creator to make a difference – but the cupboard is ominously bare.

England still show fighting spirit

England may have had some of that World Cup optimism put into context in this opening Uefa Nations League game – but this was hardly a night of solely bad news for manager Gareth Southgate.

As he rightly said, England could have sunk as Spain passed their way around them and dominated – but the character and resilience of Russia is still intact.

England hung in and could have earned a point they would not have deserved with a late rally, only denied by a controversial decision from Dutch referee Danny Makkelie to rule out Danny Welbeck’s finish for a foul on David de Gea.

It was to England’s credit that they never let their heads drop.

Southgate’s side did not lack fighting spirit – it was a lack of quality that was their undoing.