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Two minutes and 55 seconds. That’s how long I really had hope of reaching the World Cup final. And it didn’t kill meIn her book Hope in the Dark the author Rebecca Solnit examines if it is possible to have hope when you consider all of human suffering. She quotes the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova: “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivety.” By all accounts it is a compelling argument for hope as a catalyst for social change.Meanwhile, Graham Burrell wrote: “It is the hope that kills you” following Lincoln City’s 2-1 home defeat to Wigan in 2024. “I feel perhaps our playoff push was finally killed off yesterday.”It is hard to know where exactly to place that defeat at Sincil Bank in the pantheon of human suffering. And the same goes for England’s capitulation to Argentina on Wednesday.And it is also hard to find the first person who ever said: “It is the hope that kills you.” It could be anyone from William Shakespeare to Peter Ustinov. Many have developed it. Ted Lasso, for example: “So, I’ve been hearing this phrase y’all got over here that I ain’t too crazy about. ‘It’s the hope that kills you’. Y’all know that? I disagree, you know? I think it’s the lack of hope that comes and gets you. See, I believe in hope. I believe in belief.”And then there’s Jackson Lamb from Slow Horses. “It’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you – that kills you.”You wonder if England would have fared better in those last 30 minutes with Lasso or Lamb in the dugout. Their respective approaches would have been slightly different. Lasso certainly wouldn’t have played a back six. They wouldn’t sit back. Lamb would call them all idiots and tell them to get on with it. Arm round the shoulder or kick up the arse – the full spectrum is here.But what any England fan, or any sports fan knows – is that hope, as a pure emotion, is perhaps the most incapacitating. Hope isn’t immediate. Hope doesn’t really exist at the start of the game. It certainly plays second fiddle to fear. Fear during the buildup, fear during the ludicrous 10-second countdown, fear as the ball rolls back to Jordan Pickford. I could feel, almost hear, my heart beating at twice its normal rate.As the game settles, the heart settles. Well, settles is perhaps the wrong word. It is base-level angst with little pockets of rage as Giuliano Simeone harries and hacks and kicks and growls. Where’s the yellow card? Are the conspiracists right? He fails to kick Marc Guéhi and then goes with his head like a shark biting thin air too far out of the water. By now, even well-timed tackles by Argentinians are evil. Fouls by English players are justified. Another pint of myopia, please.Half-time is where the first waves of pessimism appear. The longer this goes, the more likely Argentina will do it. They know how to do it. I say meaningless things like “muscle memory”. I say meaningful things like “wily bastards”.And then the goal. The perfect cross. The perfect finish. It is an outpouring of joy and relief and possibility. It is the first real moment of hope, combined with the “Well, at least they need two now” mindset – we’ve all watched England for long enough.The only other ecstatic moment is the Djed Spence tackle. Spence has looked so relaxed he’s barely bothered about any of this. Just be surprisingly brilliant and then go home and do the washing-up. But that celebration – like Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci together. “Yes, Djed!” I shout. The greatest England tackle since Eric Dier on Sergio Ramos – and wildly more important. If things had gone differently, that would headline your montage. That would be one of your statues.Now, there’s a chance that someone else in the game has mentioned England dropping deep already. Was it Thomas Tuchel? Was it the players? Is it just English paralysis? Chances are you don’t need another tactical deep dive – I know I don’t.This is about the few minutes where the hope was genuine. Where I started to think about a World Cup final. The enjoyable part of the tournament isn’t the games, it’s just still being in the thing. It’s being able to watch other matches knowing you still have a dog in the fight. The actual game itself is the ordeal you have to endure.The retreat had already started before the hydration break. But how many of us said: “It’s too soon to defend this.” With 10 men at the Azteca it made sense. Even if England are able to see this out, can I handle torture? But time keeps going, and with every missed chance, with every save, hope beganto creep in.In the 82nd minute, Nico O’Reilly blocks a pass and chases it down and gets another block. We are in their half – a foreign land. I shouted to my Football Weekly colleague John Brewin: “That’s saved eight seconds.” A minute later Lionel Messi lofts a cross harmlessly out of play for a goal-kick. That was the moment I thought maybe. Just maybe.I began to think about England being in a World Cup final – selfishly, what a dream few days to be in New York, preview podcasts and TalkSport shows writing themselves. I could do a column about hope – but about the other hope. What a privilege.Goal-kick to England. Scoring a goal is hard, even if you have Messi. John Stones is doing keepy-ups. Pickford launches the goal-kick up field and O’Reilly gets on the end of it. Throw to Argentina deep in their half. “Eighty-four minutes on the clock now,” says Guy Mowbray. “I keep looking at that clock and thinking it’s going ever so slow,” says Alan Shearer.84’24. Enzo Fernández shoots from distance. Pickford tips it over. It’s going over. But it’s OK. Just keep your shape. 84’55. Enzo has too much time on the edge of the box. Enzo shoots. Enzo scores – and we all know it’s done.Two minutes and 55 seconds. That’s how long I really genuinely had hope. And it didn’t kill me. It was thrilling, terrifying and life-affirming. I have spoken before about whether I’ll ever be ready to see England’s men win anything – and maybe I’ll never have to test that emotion. But for the time being hope is actually enough for me. Just a morsel of it. If hope can be a catalyst for social change, if it can help us change the world, then it can help us imagine Adam Wharton lifting the European Championship trophy in 2028, even just for a fleeting moment.

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Technical class in the fiercest battles was again lacking at the World Cup but there is hope amid the soul-searchingThe post-match inquest into England’s elimination was almost over when Thomas Tuchel offered a revealing analysis of Argentina’s knack of instigating late comebacks at this World Cup.“In their culture, ball possession plays a crucial role. It starts from a young age,” he said. “That is in the DNA and it demands a lot of self-confidence – natural self‑confidence to always want the ball, to always be in the gaps, to always define yourself through the ball. I think that is a crucial thing: to show courage.”This time, it wasn’t meant as a dig at his own players. But after the latest example of England surrendering a lead that can be traced all the way back to the 2002 World Cup in Japan, when Michael Owen scored in the 23rd minute against Brazil before the team tried to defend for their lives and failed, there was no avoiding the underlying message.Despite the Football Association’s best efforts to produce players who are able to “intelligently dominate possession” as outlined when it launched its “England DNA philosophy” at St George’s Park back in December 2014, there is still a shortage of top-class central midfielders with the technical skills required to win a World Cup semi-final.Tuchel’s epitaph for this tournament will be the statistic that England had only 12% of possession between Anthony Gordon opening the scoring in the 55th minute and Lautaro Martínez’s winner in the second minute of stoppage time. Equally as damning is that, of the 39 passes they attempted in that period, 12 came from the goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford, while only five took place in Argentina’s half.That indicates – as well as there being a lack of forward runners to put the pressure back on opponents that included a 38-year-old Nicolás Otamendi in defence for the last 20 minutes – that England were unable to play their way out of trouble when Argentina pressed high up the pitch and ended up giving the ball straight back.“England teams sense changing moments in the game both in and out of possession, reacting instinctively and intelligently,” reads the DNA philosophy that was devised by Dan Ashworth, who was the FA’s director of elite development in 2014. Ashworth returned to St George’s Park last May after his ill-fated spell as Manchester United’s sporting director. He had left the FA for Brighton in 2019 before moving to Newcastle three years later.His remit after returning last May in the newly created role of chief football officer to work alongside the technical director, John McDermott, was to oversee the regeneration of the National Football Centre as well as “building the long-term systems that underpin the FA’s performance ambitions”. In other words, find a way of playing without fear when it really comes to the crunch.“We felt them going backwards and backwards rather than going forward,” said the Argentina goalkeeper, Emiliano Martínez. “Sometimes when you are winning, you have to go forward anyway. You can’t change the gameplan.”While the academy system in England has become the envy of most countries given the resources at the disposal of Premier League clubs, it has still not found a way of producing technically gifted players who are capable of running games from midfield. But there have been signs that things may be starting to change.Elliot Anderson has emerged as an England first-choice over the past 12 months and Manchester City’s £116m summer signing is at the forefront of a new generation of midfielders who look capable of mixing it with the best at the European Championship in two years’ time on home soil.Manchester United supporters are still scratching their heads over Kobbie Mainoo’s lack of game time given his skill set was a key factor in their revival under Michael Carrick in the second half of last season. Mainoo’s inclusion alongside Jordan Henderson as the back-ups to Anderson and Declan Rice meant there was no place in the squad for either Bournemouth’s Alex Scott or Myles Lewis-Skelly of Arsenal.It could be argued that they were the two in-form midfielders in the country during the final month of the Premier League season, with Scott – who formed a winning partnership with Anderson at last summer’s European Under-21 Championship – standing out in Bournemouth’s win over Arsenal and draw with Manchester City that ended up defining the title race.Lewis-Skelly’s chances of being selected for the World Cup seemed remote when he lost his place as England’s first-choice left-back. Yet after returning as an all-action midfielder who kept Spain’s Martín Zubimendi out of the Arsenal team for the title run-in and excelled against Paris Saint‑Germain midfield in the Champions League final, the 19-year-old could have provided exactly what Tuchel described as a “natural self‑confidence to always want the ball”.Both look destined to play important roles for England, although whether that is the case with Mainoo or Adam Wharton will be intriguing to see.Like Anderson, Scott and Angel Gomes – the former United playmaker who was handed a shock call-up by Lee Carsley in 2024 – Wharton began his career as a No 10 before shifting to a deeper role. Tuchel does not seem to trust the Crystal Palace midfielder but he has the passing range and ability to unlock defences, not to mention a confidence and swagger on the ball that can’t be taught.As Ashworth and co contemplate another round of soul-searching, the answers to England’s prayers may already be here.

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German will be pilloried for his semi-final decisions but that is to ignore the fact English football culture is not set up to win major tournaments“I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”As England’s World Cup hopes recede into another spell of heartache, let down in Atlanta by the latest handsome, cadaverous Mr Right, a little sadder, not much wiser, sunburnt, broke, eating Jägerbomb ice cream out of the tub with a spoon, this is a good moment to seek some classic New York romcom solace. Meg Ryan was right. Don’t be sad that it’s over. Be incredibly angry and frustrated on the radio that it happened at all.The World Cup will now reassemble in New York for its ceremonial tying of the final knot, that interminable walk down the aisle finally complete. As for England, it will be some time before anyone feels like getting back out there. There must be time for shock, process, recriminations. There must be time for a spell of it’s not us: it’s you, Thomas.Drinking in the extreme emotional reaction to England’s tournament exit, which was, for all its frustrations, still pretty much the same as all the other exits, it is tempting to pause before blaming the manager so explicitly. Here we go then. Another tale of much-questioned selections and a team that shrank on the big stage. Did you ever hear the one about the man who likes to complain that every one of his ex wives have had the same failing, they just don’t get him, and that goes for all 17 of them?What is it with all these Mr Wrongs? Remember the last one? Open letters about the meaning of marmalade. Bad selections and the team shrank on the big stage. Thank God we got rid of him, eh? Remember the one before that? Ray Lewington must see Paris. Bad selections and the team shrank on the big stage. Before that? Angry, mute, foreign. Bad selections and the team shrank on the big stage. Before that? Umbrella stuff. Bad selections, team shrank on the big stage. Before that? Chilly nordic sex maniac. Bad selections. Team shrank. Big stage. What a run. How unlucky can you get?But two things can also be true. The team felt oddly skewed and stodgy all tournament. Tuchel is paid very well to manage these occasions. And he did undeniably balls this up, with a major opportunity on hand to do the opposite.By the time Tuchel appeared post-match deep in the refrigerated sub-tiers of the Atlanta Stadium he seemed already to have become thinner and more gaunt, to have become basically a skull, a depressed skull with good taste in tailored menswear, up there talking fluently about the need to retain tactical perspective, openly wrestling with how to respond to what was heading his way, because, as he said – and this is true – when you lose every choice you made is wrong, and every other choice you didn’t is right.On the other hand it is now heads on pikes time. Everyone loves a bottling. And that is what we got here. What is the charge list? Mainly it’s the period 72-92 minutes in Atlanta, when suddenly England’s entire world became defence, fear, terror-ball, flinching for the blow. It was on 72 minutes that Tuchel reacted to his team having already lost all shape, will or threat of an attacking outlet by going to a deep back five.With 82 minutes gone England had six defenders on the pitch. The talk of energy, balls, guts, fearlessnesses had all evaporated, replaced by what was basically an attempt to burgle it. This was a misjudgment. It worked against Norway and Mexico, narrowly. But neither of those teams feature a walking speed all-time great who will kill you just for the fun of it if you don’t press him, if you offer up a comfortable pocket of air.This was dying with your boots barely on. It was living on your knees. It was what always happens. And this was supposed to be not that.So Tuchel will also now be re-pilloried for his squad selection, which is easy and also allows for an unprovable counterfactual history. In reality the squad was largely a success. England beat the hosts and reached the semis. The fringe players looked happy and energised. The things Tuchel did poorly against Argentina he had previously done well. People sometimes screw up. Your tactics dad will not always fix you. Tuchel was heading for an eight here overall, downgraded to a seven post Atlanta, and with a four on that game alone.At which point it is necessary to look at that wider picture, to look away from the idea of the magic man, the saviour. “Maybe a happy ending doesn’t include a guy. Maybe it’s you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over”. Not my words. The words, famously, of the romcom He’s Just Not That into You, and an excellent reminder that so often the deeper answer lies closer to home. Tuchel failed to beat Argentina in the moment. More widely he failed to beat England, or rather the concept, the abstract of England, which is always there in every game, your most feared opponent, in all its ornate and tortured exceptionalism, its heavy, heavy air.The real event here was not minutes 72-92. It was the thing Tuchel failed to respond to in that span, the key event in Atlanta, the complete unravelling of England’s players on the pitch after taking the lead 17 minutes earlier. At that moment England cowered, dropped deep, held on, saw the whole of the moon, felt the line in sight, victory against Argentina, and shrank from it.Tuchel’s failure was not in failing to foresee this. His rant (translation: controlled explanation of failings) after the Norway game looks prescient now. He saw this coming. He could do nothing to prevent it. And so England lost as they always do at this stage. Fail again. Fail exactly the same way.Suddenly England were being bullied, pushed back, feeling the full force of the Messi personality, out there hacking corners away with 20 minutes still to play. Tuchel didn’t want this. He urged them forward from the touchline. Harry Kane disappeared. His moment wasn’t exactly bad here. It just didn’t exist. Tuchel did try to fix things, went into overdrive in the hydration break, iPad out, down on the turf waving his arms in a show of manic energy.The knockout games are often decided by those slack, disorderly periods late in the day, when the ability to control the tempo and the ball, the skillset of the elite self-governing midfielders becomes the greatest team asset. And England’s midfield still lacks the extreme possession-based craft that wins tight knockout games. They lost like this to Croatia in 2018, where Luka Modric just took the game away. The lost like this to Italy in 2021, when the ball just steadily disappeared into that calm blue cloud. International football rewards a cultural connectivity, a degree of intelligence and game awareness, off-the-cuff creativity. And the fact is England just don’t make the really high-end controlling midfielder whose game is entirely craft and intelligence.And this is the real point here. Tuchel may have failed to reverse engineer a fix, to add a gloss from the top on a culture of haphazard development. But maybe this is a stupid idea in the first place. England have tried to game the system, to find a cheat code, to buy a very expensive high-end club manager, outsourced expertise.The Football Association’s plan never really made much sense. Eighteen months to fix it all, and with a late start too because this saves a bit of money. This, right here, is the culture of short cuts, bodge jobs, confusion, lack of game intelligence, just expressed at an executive tier.You can’t make a culture. There is no real English way of playing. There is a Premier League way, kind of. But what is that? The league is an international talent clearing house, rootless, acquisitive, cannibalistic, where very few of the key players in the best teams are home products.What would England winning the World Cup even mean? What message would it express? This is how you win a World Cup? Neglect your coaching culture. Produce no managers. Create academy players who fulfil a brief but don’t really have a coherent style, in the way Thierry Henry has described the Spanish development system so eloquently. Then stick a highly paid internationalist club manager on top and hope it all makes sense when the pips squeak and a genius level player asks what are you actually made of?Tuchel’s mistakes in defeat can be picked out, re-run, dissected. But he is also part of a much wider process, choices made, turns taken over many decades. England are much better and more coherent as a team. So much effort has gone into bridging that gap. It has narrowed. But this is still England, still out there being true to itself, still crashing in the same car.

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The England head coach took a risk by selecting injury-prone players and ignoring creative options such as Foden, Palmer and Gibbs-WhiteWhen Thomas Tuchel became England’s head coach he spoke repeatedly about wanting his side to adopt a Premier League style. He wanted intensity, pace, full-throttle football. Tuchel offered clarity, his analysis was precise and his squad for the World Cup was built around the idea of overwhelming opponents with physicality and relentless running.There were roles for specialists and places for individuals who could be trusted to bring the vibes. There were like-for-like alternatives in various positions and Tuchel was granted a lot of leeway. He was bold with his choices and could respond to questions about omitting the creativity of Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, Adam Wharton, Morgan Gibbs-White and Trent Alexander-Arnold by arguing that he had a vision and was going to stick to it.There were glimpses of England’s high-speed approach when they beat Croatia in their opening game but the illusion was shattered during the surrender from 1-0 up in the semi-final against Argentina. The self-sabotage was astonishing, as Tuchel lost his nerve and handed the game to Lionel Messi. Argentina were there for the taking but Tuchel retreated.Some England players were said to have been puzzled by Tuchel overseeing a tactical capitulation, unable to understand why he decided to play so defensively. There was widespread surprise that he did not use the pace of Noni Madueke, Bukayo Saka, or Marcus Rashford to hit Argentina on the break.Tuchel came in for criticism from a host of former players. The former Germany forward Thomas Müller was scathing about how Argentina were invited to attack England. The former England striker Wayne Rooney, a pundit for the BBC, said Tuchel’s tactics were asking for trouble.How you lose matters. England went out to Argentina in the second round in 1998 but it was an epic performance with 10 men. Atlanta was nothing like that and the Football Association remains in thrall to Tuchel and is desperate not to make a change but it needs to recognise what happened. After all, Mark Bullingham, the FA’s chief executive, said that England’s best performance under Sir Gareth Southgate was their run to the quarter-finals at the 2022 World Cup, even though it was their earliest tournament exit under Tuchel’s predecessor.The postmortem goes deeper than the end result. How was the mood in the camp? Positive enough. England were together, as they proved against Mexico in the Azteca, but how did they play? There was never any flow or identity – and when it comes to analysing why it is worth going back to how Tuchel configured his squad and then used it.On one level it is pointless moaning about Palmer and Foden, partly because their domestic struggles hurt their selection chances, but also because there is nothing to suggest Tuchel would have put them on when England were leading against Argentina. Tuchel had fast attackers on the bench and chose not to use them. He veered away from his plan and he showed no faith in Saka’s fitness. The situation seemed made for the winger to come on and run at the 32-year-old Nicolás Tagliafico on the right. Tuchel resisted. Saka has been struggling with an achilles injury and, although he has shown flashes of class in previous games, Tuchel did not trust him when it came to the crunch.Ultimately, the manager fell into the familiar trap of relying on unfit or injury-prone players. England needed Saka but he remained on the bench. Tuchel restricted his options. The aim was to have wingers going down the outside and creating overloads. Tuchel did not want Palmer and Foden cutting in and clogging up the middle. Yet Madueke, Saka’s direct replacement, was such a disappointment. He fell out of favour after the quarter-final against Norway and it is fair to wonder whether Tuchel missed a trick by not selecting Jarrod Bowen or even Rio Ngumoha given Saka’s fitness issues and Madueke’s faltering confidence. It is damning that Tuchel ended up discarding some of his wide options having placed so much store in them. Rashford, like Madueke, was cast aside after fitful early displays.Gibbs-White, a direct runner who did not make the squad, may feel he could have made an impact given that he can also play wide and scored 18 goals last season. If only this was just about Saka, though. The problem is that several England players were injury concerns. The Newcastle defender Tino Livramento flew home injured. John Stones was rusty in central defence and needed time to get going. Reece James, another who played in the cursed right-back position, predictably had hamstring trouble and went down with cramp shortly before Argentina’s equaliser.These were foreseeable problems. Equally, it is fair to say that there were not many other defensive options. Luke Shaw and Lewis Hall are good left-backs but have fragile injury records. Harry Maguire’s bitter reaction to not being selected tells you why Tuchel overlooked him.Still, Tuchel ended up with a squad containing six centre-backs but only one left-footed left-back (Nico O’Reilly) and four central midfielders. He tied his own hands, not least when it came to reacting to Declan Rice’s neural pain in a hamstring and his lower back.Rice is crucial to how England play. Their structure disappears without him in midfield. Yet Tuchel knew his vice-captain was struggling to complete games. There had to be a viable alternative but the cover for Rice and Elliot Anderson was Jordan Henderson and Kobbie Mainoo.Those were mind-bending choices. Henderson is 36 and had made one brief substitute appearance in five games before fracturing a wrist during the celebrations against Mexico. Was he really there in a playing role? The evidence suggests otherwise. In fact Tuchel’s favoured change when Rice was struggling was to put James in midfield. Mainoo, who treats the ball like a friend, has not played. Wharton, another snappy passer, watched from home. Alex Scott, the energetic Bournemouth midfielder, and Myles Lewis-Skelly, who started in midfield for Arsenal in the Champions League final, were also overlooked.Tuchel never seemed to understand why he took Mainoo. He can complain about England lacking control when they led against Argentina but he left out players who are comfortable on the ball. It was a conscious choice from Tuchel and what makes it worse is that he did not even stick to his plan.Why did he not make better use of his squad? Tuchel spoke about having 14 or 15 starters. Others were there for specific situations. Ivan Toney was there as battering ram for emergency situations. Not giving the striker a sniff until England were on the verge of going out at least felt logical. However, not using Ollie Watkins was a weird choice. Harry Kane had a poor game against Argentina and should have been substituted. Watkins could have worked the channels and stretched them. The striker was given one brief substitute appearance against Panama, though, and is entitled to feel that Tuchel was too wedded to Kane.Plenty of England managers have blundered by indulging the star players. Tuchel was meant to be different. Now he looks like many who came before him. The scrutiny will be intense. Some players will wonder about the manager’s negativity. Others will wonder why they were not given a chance. The fans are ready to turn. There was trust in Tuchel. The FA will cling to it but the damage to his aura is vast. He made mistakes and the manner of the defeat makes it hard to look past them.

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No successful tackles after the 63rd minute and failure to break up play through fouls also played their part in World Cup semi-final defeatThere will be coaching courses of the future that use footage of England’s performance against Argentina to illustrate how not to defend a one-goal lead. If that sounds harsh, the data from the match justifies that stance.Many ugly statistics emerged once the postmortem began. The most damning came from OptaJoe, who noted England had 12% possession in the 30 minutes between Anthony Gordon’s goal and Argentina’s equaliser. “That is the lowest by a team to be winning for at least 10 minutes in a World Cup match in the last 60 years,” they added.It gets worse if we break this period down. Compared with what was to come, Thomas Tuchel’s side did relatively well before the hydration break. A fine Harry Kane pass helped set up a shot in the 66th minute, before the captain immediately had an effort when England regained possession in the final third. Although Emiliano Martínez’s goal was not seriously threatened, the sequence suggested Argentina could be occupied in their own half.That threat disappeared once Ezri Konsa replaced Gordon as England adopted a 5-4-1 formation. The change left them with no real pace on the break. As huge a call as it would have been to substitute Kane, he provided little benefit once the team tried to see out the match with a low block.Here’s something for Tuchel to consider as he awaits the third-place playoff rather than the final this weekend. England’s goal difference across the tournament was +6 from 6.3 matches, or +0.82 per 90 minutes played. It’s interesting how it fluctuated with different players on the pitch, as wary as we must be of reading too much into small samples for individuals in team sports. The goal difference was +2.01 per 90 when Bukayo Saka was playing, +1.16 for Reece James and +1.14 for Gordon.Pace has helped them and it might have here, yet the Arsenal winger remained on the bench. Having a fast player to target up front would have offered an escape route from pressure.About 19 minutes separated Konsa coming on and the winning goal. England attempted 11 passes in that period.Eleven. This isn’t Spinal Tap, it’s a World Cup semi-final. Only four of their passes in this spell were completed: two from the post-hydration break restart as Jordan Pickford gave the ball to John Stones before immediately receiving it back, then another in stoppage time when Kane found Jude Bellingham only for him to surrender possession. The other successful pass? Bellingham’s kick-off after Enzo Fernández’s equaliser.That sequence summed up how England’s hopes dissolved. Bellingham passed back to Pickford, who sent the ball long towards Kane to no avail. The goalkeeper was responsible for five of England’s seven unsuccessful passes between Konsa’s introduction and them going 2-1 down, with three of his efforts going out of play.A lack of game management was another problem. Argentina frequently broke up play through fouls (not all of which were awarded) until they went behind. England conceded one free-kick between Gordon’s goal and the 97th minute and made their final successful tackle of the contest in the 63rd.To cap it all, England conceded the winner to a header from 174cm tall Lautaro Martínez after bringing on 201cm Dan Burn to combat Argentina’s aerial threat. Burn’s only touches occurred in the final third after England went behind. In their own penalty area he was no use, more an incredibly large ornament.No matter which numbers you use to analyse the period after England went ahead, the sums don’t add up.

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Manager under fire for manner of 2-1 defeat by Argentina‘There is enough to improve and I am happy to do that’Thomas Tuchel says he is “100%” committed to leading England at Euro 2028 and finding the “extra level” for glory that eluded his team at the World Cup.The manager is under fire for the manner of Wednesday’s 2-1 semi-final defeat in Atlanta. His switch to a back five for the final quarter at 1-0 up did not work, Argentina scoring two late goals to advance into Sunday’s final against Spain.Tuchel maintains the system was not the problem, rather it was the passivity of the players after Anthony Gordon opened the scoring in the 55th minute. He lamented England’s inability to get on the ball and control the game, suggesting it was not in their DNA to do so. The Football Association hired him to solve this issue, among others, and the pain of familiar failings continues to pound.But Tuchel, who signed a contract extension in February to carry him through the Euro 2028 campaign, remains determined and retains the FA’s backing. Asked whether he wanted to take the team forward in the next two years, he replied: “Yes, 100%. There is still enough to improve and I am more than happy to do that. I’ve loved every day of the World Cup.“I said after the quarter-final win against Norway that I see a disconnect from what I see in training on a football level and within the games. We can impose ourselves more on the ball. We can show what good football players we are. That is still in us as I see it in training and in every camp. And here also at the World Cup. I still feel there is an extra level that we need to conquer. We need to step up to the next level to get the big prize.”At the FA, there is a measure of satisfaction at how the team made it to the semi-finals, and realism, too. When the draw was made, it was considered to be tougher than at previous tournaments under Sir Gareth Southgate, starting with a group that contained Croatia and Ghana.The FA acknowledged the peril of a potential run from the last 16 to the final that took in Mexico in the altitude of Mexico City, Brazil, Argentina and Spain or France. In the event, it was Norway not Brazil in the quarter-final.The governing body was also acutely conscious of the situational and logistical challenges – especially the heat and travel. When England arrived in Atlanta for the Argentina game, it was after their 13th flight since the beginning of the tournament. All this after a gruelling Premier League season for most of the squad. There is the hope that a European Championship – which England will co-host – can be more straightforward.The FA’s chief executive, Mark Bullingham, was quick to show his appreciation after the full-time whistle against Argentina. “It is heartbreaking to be so close,” he said. “The players and Thomas gave it everything and the squad, coaches and staff could not have worked harder during the tournament. I would like to thank them all.”Tuchel was damned by the optics of his retreat into the back five when he sacrificed the pacy outlet of Gordon for the extra centre-half in Ezri Konsa on 72 minutes. But he argued that the rot had set in before then – specifically after Gordon’s goal – when the team were in their usual 4-2-3-1 formation.One of the turning points came in the 64th minute when the Argentina manager, Lionel Scaloni, replaced the defensive midfielder Leandro Paredes with the left winger Nico González and moved to 4-2-4. Scaloni went all-out in the 81st minute as England still led, withdrawing the left-back, Nico Tagliafico, and introducing the striker Lautaro Martínez. It paid off, Martínez scoring the stoppage-time winner. England had only 12% of the possession between the Gordon and Martínez goals.“We got too passive within our structure,” Tuchel said. “I tried to help … for us to actually be more active in a back five, to be quicker out to their wingers. We encouraged everyone to step out, to be more active but we just struggled. We couldn’t find any duels any more, which was why we dropped deeper and deeper. It was never the plan but it happened. We couldn’t stop the runners from the second line, the midfielders through our gaps. And their deliveries were on the highest level.“We needed to get back on the ball otherwise you cannot break the pressure and you cannot get the momentum back. We just couldn’t cope with the momentum swing. Ball possession plays a crucial role. It’s maybe not in our DNA like it is in the Spanish DNA or the Argentinian or Brazilian DNA – to take the ball and control the game.“It’s also not a problem to defend deep. You can stay active. But we struggled. We struggled physically, as well. Through the whole tournament … playing in the heat, playing in the altitude [against Mexico] and with a man down [after Jarell Quansah’s red card]. It cost us a lot in the end. We gave everything but it was not enough.“My feeling is that no structure in the world could have helped us because we were too passive. We were not physical enough, we didn’t stop runs arriving in our box and the deliveries were then too good.”

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There was a sense of deja vu as Argentina came from behind to win an intense semi-final. But the players also gave the nation some memorable highsHistorically, English football-supporting culture has had a well-known darker side. But in recent decades, as the England men’s team’s trophy drought has continued, some of its unofficial anthems have acquired an endearingly melancholy quality. “It was nearly complete, it was nearly so sweet”, as the Three Lions song had it in the 1990s, when England exited a World Cup and a European Championship at the semi-final stage.This summer, Oasis’s Wonderwall has been the soundtrack as Harry Kane and co progressed to Wednesday’s climactic semi-final showdown with Argentina. This is a song which, very wisely in an England context, puts a heavy emphasis on the idea of “maybe”. In the end it turned out to be maybe not.A watching audience of more than 24 million began to believe as England scored first to put themselves on the brink of a first World Cup final since 1966. But a familiar sense of resignation then took over, as the team wilted under Argentinian pressure and lost to a stoppage-time winner. The Portuguese sometimes define their national sensibility using the word saudade, conveying a mixture of nostalgia and longing. England’s footballers and followers could do with their own equivalent.The inquest, thankfully, is so far proving less vicious than the one which led to the disgraceful vilification of David Beckham, after his red card was followed by defeat against Argentina in 1998. But England’s German coach, Thomas Tuchel, is coming under fire after presiding over his side’s retreat into a defensive shell in the latter stages of the game. Nervous England teams lost in similar fashion to Croatia in the 2018 semi-final, and to Italy in the Euro 2020 final. Tuchel was supposed to be the foreign change agent, but the inability to take control from a winning position was all too familiar. Football, as we know, is a fickle game. It was only last week that he was being talked up on Mumsnet.As the air slightly goes out of a heatwave-heavy summer, the rest of the world’s attention will shift to a Spain-Argentina final – surely to be the 39-year-old Lionel Messi’s last appearance on football’s greatest stage. The 2026 men’s World Cup has suffered from hyper-commercialisation, visa injustices and an assault on the tournament’s sporting integrity by Donald Trump, facilitated by the egregious Fifa president, Gianni Infantino. But the extraordinary longevity of Messi’s genius, which turned the game against England, has offered a spectacle to delight anyone interested in sport. The provocative and reprehensible brandishing of a Falklands-related banner by his teammates has done him a disservice by generating a row where there should been only acclamation.Tuchel and his deflated players will depart the US after a third-place match against a similarly disappointed France team. Some will leave having enhanced their reputation, others will have regrets. But collectively they confirmed England’s status in the top rank of footballing nations – a position not to be taken for granted after periods of spectacular underachievement – and gave the nation some memorable highs.The intense, passionate victory over Mexico in a cacophonous, stormy Azteca stadium will take its place among the greatest of England triumphs. For the rest, Wonderwall captures the immediate mood nicely: “Today was gonna be the day, but they’ll never throw it back to you.” There’s always tomorrow, though.

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It was a statistically weird game for Argentina’s talisman against England, full of outliers. It didn’t matterThomas Tuchel will have prepared for every eventuality before England’s match with Argentina. He will have considered how his team could prosper in attack while remaining solid in defence. What to change if they scored first or if the opening goal went against them and, like so many managers before him, he will have put plenty of thought into how best to deal with Lionel Messi.For the first hour he was largely peripheral, with the data showing how England were limiting his involvement in dangerous areas. Messi’s only possession in the centre of the penalty area was snuffed out by an Elliot Anderson tackle shortly after Anthony Gordon had scored. The proportion of the distance he covered that was defined by Fifa as sprinting speed (at least 20km/h) was 4.3%, lower than against Switzerland (4.6%) or Egypt (5.4%) in the previous two rounds.The 39-year-old’s relative lack of shots will have heartened Tuchel. The only effort Messi had was from long range and blocked before it had reached the England box. In only one of his other 19 World Cup matches in which he played the full 90 minutes did he have so few shots in normal time, though he also played 120 with one effort (on target) against the Netherlands in 2014. Against Croatia four years later his only shot came from very close range. He has arguably never been so blunt from this perspective in this competition. So far, so good for England.Messi’s heat map also burned brightest where it usually does: in the right half-space in front of the opposition’s penalty area. It would be foolish to claim England had him where they wanted him, but at least Argentina’s captain was operating where they would have expected him to be. That can be planned for, which helps.A heat map for a whole match obscures subtle shifts that occur. Picture the flank between the edge of the penalty box and the touchline, running up to the halfway line. Messi’s only touch in this zone in the opening 45 minutes occurred close to the centre circle, when he passed forward to Giuliano Simeone, who was offside.But it was from this flank that the talisman took the game away from England. Messi attempted six open-play crosses in this region in the second half. It’s a ridiculously high number for a player who has averaged 2.3 crosses (including set plays) per 90 minutes across league football since 2015. In only two World Cup games has he attempted more, though interestingly both occurred in the preceding two rounds.One of Messi’s deliveries from wide led to the Nico González header which Jordan Pickford did well to save shortly before the second hydration break. Perhaps it was this moment that firmed up Tuchel’s plan to bring on Ezri Konsa immediately after, the head coach later supplementing him with Dan Burn after switching to a back five. The strategy worked against Mexico so why not here too?Because Messi is rather better at crossing than Roberto Alvarado and Jesús Gallardo. Those two Mexico players attempted 25 open-play crosses between them at the Azteca for the reward of once chance valued at 0.05xG. Messi, with his cross for Lautaro Martínez’s winner, generated 0.53xG, more than England mustered all night. It was only his second World Cup assist with his right foot and far harder to pull off than the cutback from the byline he provided to Julián Álvarez in the semi-finals in Qatar.It was a statistically weird game for Messi, full of outliers. It didn’t matter. Wherever the space happens to be, the greatest of all time will be there to torch your best-laid plans.

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Spokesperson says islands belong to the UK‘PM wishes both teams well for the final, especially Spain’Keir Starmer supports the idea of Fifa investigating Argentina players who displayed a banner touting their country’s claim to the Falklands Islands after their World Cup semi-final win against England, Downing Street has said.Starmer, who watched the match while travelling to Ukraine by train for the final overseas trip of his premiership, endorsed a call by Peter Kyle, the business secretary, for Fifa to investigate what rules may have been broken.After Argentina’s 2-1 win in an occasionally fractious match in Atlanta on Wednesday, some players held up a banner that said: “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”, using the country’s term for the South Atlantic islands.Argentina face Spain in Sunday’s final. Asked who Starmer would be supporting, his spokesperson said: “The PM wishes both teams well for the final, especially Spain.”Asked for Starmer’s reaction to the sign, they said: “The World Cup might not be ours, but the Falkland Islands definitely are. Our position is unchanged. Self-determination rests with the islanders and our commitment to the Falklands will never waver.“More broadly, potential action is a matter for Fifa, but it’s been a fantastic World Cup and we’ve said throughout that politics should stay out of football.”Earlier on Thursday, Kyle told the BBC that the banner was “an egregious violation of the rules of not having political activity as part of the football”.He added: “The World Cup has one of its central tenets that politics is separate from football. That is now a matter for Fifa. I expect Fifa to do its investigation thoroughly.” The PM’s spokesperson said Starmer endorsed Kyle’s comments urging Fifa to investigate.As to whether Thomas Tuchel should consider his position after England were comprehensively outplayed for long sections of the match, the spokesperson said this was a matter for the England head coach. “Thomas Tuchel and his team have taken us deep into the tournament this World Cup, giving us thrilling matches against teams like Mexico and Norway that people in England will never forget, and he thinks that the team have represented England wonderfully, both on and off the pitch.”The semi-final was predicted as potentially likely to inflame disagreements over the Falklands. A 1982 war after Argentina invaded the islands killed more than 900 people.Argentina has complained that HMS Medway, a Royal Navy vessel, went through its national waters without permission while sailing from the Falklands to Chile this month.Starmer’s spokesperson said the UK rejected this. “We notified the Argentinian government in advance of HMS Medway undertaking a routine logistics visit to Chile between the 5 and 8 July to support British Antarctic Survey operations, which will deliver essential stores and supplies to sustain scientific research in Antarctica.“The Royal Navy always operates in full compliance with international law and the transit from the Falkland Islands to Chile was carried out via the most direct practicable practical route, considering operational safety and weather factors to ensure timely delivery.”The Falkland Islands government said: “The Falklands government is disappointed – though regrettably not surprised – that the Argentine football team decided to tarnish the result of last night’s World Cup football semi-final – a game that did not in any case involve the Falkland Islands. “That said, it is hardly news to anyone that the people of the islands were victims of an aggressive invasion in 1982, which left many traumatised. The banner displayed by Argentina last night, therefore, was particularly insensitive for many people in the Falklands … We hope Fifa will make good on their promise to keep politics out of sport, and sanction all behaviour of this nature in line with its own rules.”

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“I think there's not much to say. For now, everyone has to process what's just happened,” Harry Kane said after the defending champions, Argentina, rallied to beat England 2-1 and reach the World Cup final against Spain on Sunday.Trailing 1-0 going into the last five minutes of regulation time, Enzo Fernández and the substitute Lautaro Martínez scored for Argentina. Anthony Gordon had given England the lead, but Lionel Messi and co had other ideas. Argentina pushed for an equaliser and the pressure eventually led to Fernández scoring in the 85th minute. Martinez headed the winner two minutes into injury time.“Everyone's gutted. I'm gutted for all the boys, all the staff, everyone behind the scenes, because we know how much everyone puts into being a successful national team,” said Kane. “When you're so close, when you're 10-plus minutes away and it slips out of your hands like that, obviously, the lads are devastated.”England hearts broken after turnaround in AtlantaIn pictures: our pick of the best big-match images Continue reading...

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Head coach has no regrets but admits he will be judgedBellingham appears to strike Argentina’s Barco on headThomas Tuchel shouldered the blame for England becoming far too passive after taking the lead as Argentina ended his team’s World Cup dream with a dramatic late comeback.England were within minutes of a first men’s World Cup final on foreign soil after going ahead through Anthony Gordon early in the second half. But the reigning champions equalised through a piledriver from Enzo Fernández before the substitute Lautaro Martínez scored the decisive goal in the second minute of injury time to send Argentina through to Sunday’s final against Spain in New York.England’s players slumped to the turf at the full-time whistle, with the captain, Harry Kane, leading them over to the travelling fans to thank them for their support and Jude Bellingham wiping away tears. There were contrasting emotions for Lionel Messi, who sank to his knees and pumped his fists in delight when Argentina’s second successive final was confirmed.Tuchel, who opted to withdraw Declan Rice and Reece James three minutes before Fernández’s equaliser as England switched to a back five, could not hide his disappointment and acknowledged he had had played a part in England’s downfall.“We decided to go to a back five because the gaps were far too open,” said Tuchel. “Argentina played with more risk, played with more rhythm and played with the feeling maybe that they had nothing to lose any more, which freed them up and pulled us back. Because we obviously played suddenly with a feeling that we had a lot to lose. Of course the responsibility is on the coach and if it doesn’t go well it’s easy to say it was wrong.”Asked whether England’s tendency to throw away leads was a question of mentality, he said: “I don’t believe so much in an English thing and a curse or whatever. It’s repeating itself in different moments. It’s different coaches, different players, different situations.“What cost us today was that we were not active enough in any structure. I can understand these discussions are out there and of course a million coaches after the game know it better. You can discuss this with a million coaches. I have to make a decision on the pitch. It’s how I analyse the match and I take the responsibility.“At the moment no regrets. The team gave everything and we were very very close. We deserved to be up 1-0. We played one of our better matches, maybe our best match under the circumstances. The team was top – we couldn’t bring it over the line.”England managed only 12% possession between Gordon’s goal and conceding the winner and Kane felt they had been overwhelmed by Argentina.“Just gutted, gutted for the boys, gutted for everyone: the team, the staff, the fans,” he told the BBC. “We played well for the vast majority of it. Once we went 1-0 up we just seemed to try to hold on which, at this level, is not enough. After the goal, whether it was them putting more men forward or us being able to match them man for man, it just was wave after wave and we were just trying to hold on, put the blocks in, but in the end it wasn’t enough.”Bellingham appeared to strike the Argentina substitute Valentín Barco on the back of the head after the game had finished and had to be dragged away by the reserve goalkeepers Dean Henderson and James Trafford. He was not punished by the officials.The Manchester United defender Lisandro Martínez celebrated on the pitch after the game with a banner that read “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” (“The Malvinas are Argentinian”) in reference to the Falklands war.Argentina came from 2-0 down to beat Egypt in the last 16 and Lautaro Martínez said the team had again never given up. “England pressed hard for about 60 minutes. After finding the goal, they dropped back, and that gave us more composure in circulating the ball and spreading the play..”An emotional Lionel Scaloni paid tribute to his side’s fighting spirit. “This team plays best when they are facing adversity,” Argentina’s head coach said. “We had a challenging situation, there was blood in the water and we went for it. We had six or seven chances and the ball wouldn’t go in but the team fought until the end. After they scored, we really proved ourselves – it shows what football means to us and it goes beyond tactics.”

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England head coach made changes that would have led to Southgate and Eriksson being hammeredLionel Messi has seen buses reverse into position before. England did not confront the greatest player of all time with anything new when they dropped back with a place in the World Cup final within reach. The negativity was lamentable and it was no surprise when punishment arrived in the form of a clinical Argentina fightback in Atlanta.This was a tale as old as time. There was a chance for England to push on after Anthony Gordon fired them ahead early in the second half, but they reverted to type. The mentality was passive and they looked scared to win. No one put a foot on the ball and offered control. Harry Kane? Invisible in another game. The midfield? Outplayed, outrun and outclassed by Alexis Mac Allister and Enzo Fernández. Thomas Tuchel? Outwitted by Lionel Scaloni, whose substitutions made a difference, and too quick to retreat when there was so long left for England to defend their lead.This was supposed to be where Tuchel came into his own. The master tactician, the expensive foreign coach, the finisher capable of succeeding where Sir Gareth Southgate failed. It had been a good tournament for Tuchel until this point. His changes had worked in successive knockout wins and for a moment it even seemed his big call here, starting Morgan Rogers on the right, was going to work.Rogers made the opening goal in the 55th minute, his cross converted by Gordon at the far post. From there, though, England were miserable. Forget about mustering an attack, they barely completed a pass. Incredibly, they seemed to think they could survive with ultra-defence, panicked clearances and scare after scare for more than 30 minutes. Inevitably, they were wrong.It is a very English trait, that inclination to hold what we have against the best sides. It happened under Sven-Göran Eriksson at Euro 2004, advantages against France and Portugal frittered away, and it was a failing under Southgate, who was criticised for not being proactive enough when England lost big knockout games against Croatia and Italy after scoring early.The idea was that it would be different under Tuchel. He was key to Chelsea defying the odds against Manchester City in the Champions League final in 2021. The German is a whir of activity on the touchline, always thinking about his next move, always strategising, and it is worth stressing that England’s uneven run to the last four has been powered in part by smart in-game management from Tuchel.Equally there has been no true identity to England’s play. They have laboured against low blocks and produced horrible spells in every game. Tuchel failed to produce a complete performance and his side handled this situation terribly.There was an immediate shift after Gordon’s goal, a heroic Djed Spence tackle denying Giuliano Simeone. For a while a robbery was on the cards. Cristian Romero drew a spectacular save from Jordan Pickford. Mac Allister headed against a post. England wilted, offering no intensity. They were defending like a lower-league side in an FA Cup tie, mustering just 12% possession between going 1-0 up and falling 2-1 behind. Kane was back in his box to bash the ball away. Jude Bellingham barely had a sniff. Rogers had one break but his shot was blocked.For England, who finished with one shot on target, going through to face Spain would have been a travesty. There was no jeopardy for Argentina to endure, no sense they could be caught out if they pushed forward. The only surprise was that it took so long for them to equalise through Fernández, who was under no pressure when he scored from long range.England were not even defending their box well. Argentina exposed them in the air and Scaloni felt the mood swing. He removed his defensive shield and brought on a winger, Nicolás González replacing Leandro Paredes.Argentina showed intent. Tuchel showed fear. It felt premature when he switched to the back five that saw England over the line against Mexico and Norway. England were asking for trouble when Gordon, one of their few outlets, made way for Ezri Konsa.There was exhaustion everywhere. Reece James and Declan Rice, just back from illness, faded. Tuchel kept making defensive changes. Nico O’Reilly joined Rogers and Elliot Anderson in midfield. Suddenly Dan Burn was marking Messi. It was only ending one way.These were changes that would have led to Southgate and Eriksson being hammered. Tuchel succeeded only in neutralising England’s attacking threat. He could have kept Argentina honest by bringing on the fresh legs of Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford, Eberechi Eze or Noni Madueke. There was a period when both Argentina’s centre-backs were on bookings but they were never exposed.There will be focus on the midfield choices. Kobbie Mainoo, a nimble technician, was not given a minute. Jordan Henderson has a story to tell about a broken wrist. There were no replacements for Anderson and Rice when they tired. Tuchel made his choices. He never knew why he picked Mainoo over Adam Wharton and Alex Scott.England deserved their punishment. Bellingham tried to carry the ball forward at 1-1 but was crowded out by four blue shirts. It was never going to extra time. Mac Allister hit the same post. Lautaro Martínez, another attacking substitute, headed in the winner.England lobbed aimless balls towards Burn and Ivan Toney during added time. Emi Martínez claimed a cross and went down with an apparent injury, but who was he kidding? Argentina’s goalkeeper had barely had a kick since England’s goal. How could he possibly have been cramping up?