England travel to Prague to face Czechia in the Nations League, with kick-off at 7.45pm BST. The game matters chiefly because of the race to reach the Nations League quarter-finals — a target that has been treated with a degree of scepticism in the build-up, but one England would find far harder to reach if they slip up here.
The immediate focus, though, is Thomas Tuchel. The England manager has been under slowly growing pressure, and the result in Prague will push that in one direction or the other: a win would ease the scrutiny, while a defeat would increase it and leave England facing a considerably more difficult route into the quarter-finals.
England’s recent performances provide the backdrop. They did a lot of good things in their meeting with Spain on Saturday and lost to the team regarded as the best in the world — a result that, in isolation, should not count against them. Yet the mood around the England team has been volatile and febrile since the collapse against Argentina, which is why the Czechia fixture carries more weight than the standings alone might suggest. A good result, and an emphatic performance to go with it, would come in handy.