Declan Rice and Elliot Anderson: Can They Start Together for England?

The argument has rumbled on all week: can Declan Rice and Elliot Anderson really start together for England?

It speaks to a wider itch among supporters. They want this team on the front foot, with two No10s buzzing between the lines, not two No6s patrolling in front of the back four. They want risk. They want incision.

But strip away the labels and you’re left with a simple truth: Rice and Anderson are two of the best central midfielders in the Premier League. Both bring elite qualities. Both, used right, can tilt a game.

Anderson sees passes most don’t. He can switch play, slide balls between centre-backs, and dictate rhythm. Rice covers ground like a long-distance runner, breaking up play and then driving his team 30 yards up the pitch. The temptation, of course, is to park them both in that deeper pocket, let them build from the back and protect the full-backs as they bomb on.

That’s the logic. Two sitters, full-backs high, control from deep.

But someone has to break out of that structure.

At club level, both men are conditioned to start the move rather than finish it. They stand behind the attack, not burst through it. For England, one of them has to step beyond the traffic, arrive on the edge of the box, take a shot, gamble on a rebound. Otherwise all that possession just circles around a low block and dies on the flanks.

If the plan isn’t biting by the hour mark, the answer can’t be to keep the handbrake on and hope. That’s the moment for positive changes. Managers live and die on those decisions: change it early and you’re hailed as a genius; misjudge it and a game you were controlling suddenly runs away from you because you’ve thrown too many bodies forward.

England can’t ignore that risk. DR Congo are no soft touch, no repeat of Panama. They have earned their place here and they carry a far sharper counter-attacking threat. Lose your balance, lose your shape, and they will sprint into the space you leave behind.

So the tightrope is clear: be brave, but not reckless. Don’t be scared of the pass that breaks a line. Don’t be scared of the shot from 25 yards. Not every attempt will come off, but the pressure builds with every effort, every cross, every second ball dropped into dangerous areas.

This will almost certainly be another low block, another game where England see more of the ball than they know what to do with. That makes variety non-negotiable. More shots from distance. Quicker switches of play. Runners beyond the striker. A different approach to the more methodical spells we saw against Ghana and Panama.

The stakes change everything as well. Lose this, and you’re on a plane home.

The shirt is heavy enough in a group game. In a World Cup knockout, in a tie England are “meant” to win, the weight on the shoulders grows again. Those scars don’t fade quickly. Think France 2016, Iceland, a night when England turned up expecting to progress and ended up staring into a void.

You walk into this kind of fixture with total concentration or you don’t walk out of it at all.

DR Congo have earned that respect. Their run at AFCON showed a team with structure and bite, and this squad carries a spine with genuine top-level experience. Premier League faces are dotted through the side and the standout in attack is Yoane Wissa, a forward who never lets defenders rest.

Wissa harries, he presses, he spins into channels and he forces centre-backs to make decisions they don’t want to make. He might not have exploded at Newcastle in the way he hoped, but this World Cup has lit a fire under him. DR Congo lean on him heavily, and he’s responded.

Behind him, Axel Tuanzebe has grown into a central figure. Those who watched him at Burnley know what he brings. His recovery pace drags his team 10 yards higher, because they trust him to clean up when the line is broken. On first glance he doesn’t look electric, but watch him open his stride and he eats up ground, strong in the duel and calm on the ball.

He has had his share of injury setbacks, the kind that can quietly derail a career. His response says everything about his character. The daily gym work, the preparation, the insistence on doing the small things right. When he crosses the white line, he plays like a man who has fought too hard to waste a minute.

Tuanzebe is vocal, a proper organiser, constantly talking his back line through situations. That leadership doesn’t come from nowhere. You don’t come through the youth system at Manchester United, reach the first team and survive in that environment if you’re anything less than an outstanding professional and a very good player. The pathway to the top of that particular tree is brutal. He climbed it.

He’s also versatile. Centre-back, right-back, he handles both with comfort. But even he faces a fight for that flank, because Aaron Wan-Bissaka has made the right side his own.

Wan-Bissaka remains one of the most formidable one-on-one defenders in the game. Opponents think they’ve skipped past him and then, out of nowhere, that telescopic leg whips the ball away. At City they used to call him “Go-Go Gadget” for a reason. Time and again he stretches into a tackle that seems impossible, timing it to perfection.

He takes pride in that art, in the pure duel. Like any old-school defender, he relishes facing the very best. If Marcus Rashford starts, the battle between two men who know each other inside out from Manchester United will be worth the ticket alone.

So this is the reality for England: a knockout tie against a team with pace on the break, a striker in form, and defenders who thrive in the very situations England want to create out wide.

The quality is there for England to win it. The question is whether they trust that quality enough to release the shackles without losing their shape. Because this one, for all the expectation, will not be straightforward.