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Watching England lose is one thing. Watching them lose surrounded by millions celebrating Argentina’s march to another World Cup final, is completely differentLook, most people were awfully good about it. Our waiter at a restaurant near Plaza de Mayo shook our hands warmly and said nice things about Jude Bellingham. On the metro ride back from the fan zone there was no massive gloating either, just bright-eyed kids in Lionel Messi shirts swept along by the nationwide euphoria. “Vamos, Vamos Argentina!” they sang, barely able to believe their team were once again in a World Cup final.And to be a stray English bystander in a city totally awash in sky blue and white was … a rare privilege. Some of us currently over here covering England’s rugby union tour have been lucky enough to visit a few iconic sporting cauldrons, but to be in Buenos Aires in the aftermath of Argentina defeating England at a football World Cup is right up there.From train drivers triumphantly honking their horns at every underground platform to people dancing in the streets and old ladies waving flags from balconies high above the traffic, it made even a frenzied cricket World Cup fixture between India and Pakistan feel like a garden fete. “Tell them you’re Scottish,” advised my Argentinian friend, concerned for our welfare in the event of an English victory. In the event there was no need for any such subterfuge.For a while, though, that was not a certainty. Imagine, if you can, sitting in a deserted library in the tiniest hamlet in deepest Tierra del Fuego. It still would not be as quiet as the aghast silence that greeted Anthony Gordon putting England 1-0 up. Forty years on from Diego Maradona’s Hand of God, the Foot of Gordon threatened to be almost as legendary. Momentarily it felt like Buenos Aires had had all the ‘air’ sucked out of it.Alas, poor England, we all know how it finished. And, leaving aside the idiot fan zone announcer briefly yelling about the ‘Malvinas’ and someone setting fire to a homemade flag of St George as the celebrations ramped up in town, the main takeaway is just how football crazy this country is. Lorries and cars with national flags draped across dashboards, Messi’s face on every billboard … Mexico and Brazil may say otherwise but Argentina belongs in an obsessive league of its own.Goodness knows how frenzied the atmosphere will be during Sunday’s final. After Argentina won the World Cup four years ago, around four million people took to the streets of the capital. The city was so ridiculously congested that a planned open-top bus parade had to be abandoned; in the end the players flew overhead in helicopters instead. I asked one local resident how long the public celebrations had lasted. “They’re still going on,” came the dry reply.And beating the English always adds a certain extra frisson. En route into town from the airport this week, our parka-wearing taxi driver made teasing ‘Hand of God’ gestures at us as soon as he found out our nationality. It might have been more amusing had he not been hammering down a busy dual carriageway at 90mph at the time.Subsequently, having made absolutely sure to charge us a vastly inflated fare on the grounds that his meter “wasn’t working”, our man also made a point of winding down his window and shouting “Campeones, Argentina!” as he pulled away. For some people, getting one over Los Ingleses never loses its appeal.Happily, though, there are also those determined to reject crass parallels between a mere football match and the 1982 Falklands crisis. Argentinian war veterans even put out an eve-of-game statement calling on politicians not to use the semi-final as a platform to push for sovereignty over the South Atlantic islands, asking fans instead to honour the memory of the Argentinian soldiers killed in the conflict.That said, “El Que No Salta Es Un Inglés” – “Anyone who doesn’t jump is an Englishman” – remains very definitely the local chant of choice. Incidentally, the recent death of Bonnie Tyler also made headlines here because her hit single, It’s a Heartache, supplies the tune for another extremely popular terrace ditty, the lyrics of which are probably best left to the imagination.Either way, it now falls to Messi and co to finish the job. Argentina’s population is about 46 million – the wider Buenos Aires metropolitan area is home to about 16 million people alone – and the scenes at the capital’s Obelisk monument, where fans traditionally go to celebrate major wins, will be off the charts should Spain be beaten.

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While England shrank away in Atlanta, Argentina’s No 10 was not finished making his mark on the biggest stageTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Well, not to this lot anyway. On a day of ceaseless rolling noise under Atlanta’s vast refrigerated dome, England reached the end of the road, the end of their own capacities at this World Cup, the end of the gears within this team. Mainly they ran into Lionel Messi, who wasn’t ready to be done just yet. Not like this anyway.With 55 minutes gone England were actually winning this game, 1-0 up thanks to Anthony Gordon’s goal, the only real moment of clarity they produced all match. At which point they simply disappeared as an animate entity from the stage.England played poorly here. The substitutions had no effect. Harry Kane basically did some light cardio quite close to a World Cup semi-final. But it was the change that really did for them, one of those moments where the clock starts to tick backwards, the skies darken, the cow really does appear to have jumped over the moon, and the energy inside the stadium is suddenly revolving entirely around that slouching, mooching figure in dark blue, who from a walking start had begun to do strange, painful things, to draw the spaces together, to make the objects around him revolve in his favour. And feeling also the lack of resistance coming the other way. Suddenly everyone out there was in the Messi space.Fast forward to 91 minutes, the score somehow still 1-1, a scoreline that looked by now like a glitch, like temporary signage, and it was of course Messi who produced the final cut. By that stage England were strung like shipwrecked mariners around their own box, scurvy-ridden, desiccated, a single skinny hand somehow still fixed on the tiller.Alexis Mac Allister had just struck the post with a low shot. Djed Spence, who chased the day to the end here, managed to nip in front of Messi for a second and nick the ball away. But it was only ever on loan. Facing two full-backs now, Spence and Nico O’Reilly, Messi simply eased into the space where a third should have been, all alone in that portable little patch of green.The cross from his right foot was perfectly, tactfully floated into the only logical area, like somebody very slowly and patiently explaining a maths problem. For a moment the ball just seemed to hang there, a lovely soft white orb, the day stretching out, as everyone in the stadium became Messi, seeing the moment before it happened.Time clicked forward again, Lautaro Martínez nodded the ball past a splayed Jordan Pickford and into the England net. And that was it, the outcome that was always coming from the moment Messi began to see the end of this game, to feel the snags, the subplots disappear, to see that it was time to apply his full force to the shapes in front of him.There were some final spasms from the corpse of England’s tournament, although this was like watching a hackneyed stage-show version of England football, Dan Burn hurling his body around the Argentina box under the high ball, flopping to the turf like a double mattress hurled from an upstairs window.But the game was done. England had shrunk from this occasion, had failed to press when they might have, had ultimately been aura-mogged, erased by a form of sporting genius that even on its quieter, more muddled days will eventually find its shape.The final whistle brought an endless rolling wave of noise. Although even here Messi kept on walking, finding space, dipping away from the prone bodies of his teammates, both fists pumping the air in the middle of all that heat and light.England were undeniably poor here, a semi-final that they basically tossed away. They produced almost no threat, no energy, no sense they had the capacity to seize the day. There will be time to assess that entropy, to find the faultlines, to wonder what might have been different, from selection to the deeply familiar sense of blinking in the light.But this was Messi’s day, and Messi’s moment. He will now play his third World Cup final, the oldest outfield player ever to appear on that stage, as well as the greatest. It has been different this time too. There had already been something new in Messi’s appearances through that edgy run to the final. He looked at times on the brink of something, like a man waking up with a start.Messi has always had one key advantage over every other player. He gets to play with Messi every game. And Messi makes every other player in his team better. He brings a separate gravity field, bathing teammates in that borrowed light, And he always has the best time, because every game is a Messi game. Think about it: this is a man who has literally never played a game of football where Messi is not in it. Every day is a Messi day. No wonder he loves football. As a spectator there are times when you feel like tapping him on the shoulder and saying: “You do know it’s not always like this, don’t you?”How would England approach this, because Messi will always be schematised, planned for, played around. Thomas Tuchel went for power and speed generally, with Morgan Rogers in on the right. For the Messi detail at left-back, Spence, the form horse, spirit animal, and cultish hero of this England team.Atlanta Stadium is a proper, city‑centre venue, appearing out of the grid of high rises and glass hangers like a huge jagged silver meteorite crash-landed in the urban incline.The colours and shapes were mesmeric at kick-off, those blocks of deep blue, white, red gold so perfectly matched. The anthems before kick-off were just energy, indistinct electricity.With a minute and 20 seconds gone Jude Bellingham was chopped down by Leandro Paredes, and it felt like a necessary formality, like Black Rod announcing parliament is now open.Messi’s first act was to wriggle through a crush of bodies, moving as always in his own plane of space and time. He fell. No foul. Outrage. Almost immediately Paredes hacked down Anderson and was booked. The first crush of shirts the coming together, the formal dance.From there, the game didn’t really start. England had their moment in that first half to apply pressure, to push with greater energy. Messi kept on walking, playing at the edge of things, a man for whom the game is so often waiting.But they failed to rush into the space when it was there, took the lead, then almost immediately collapsed as Messi began to twitch on the threads, to glide past white shirts, to release those malevolent, dipping passes.By the end this felt like two things at once. An England team that blinked, that failed to respond to its manager’s urgings; but which was also swallowed by the inevitability of Messi, and a grand, all-time talent that is somehow out there walking across this stage, shrinking it to his size, and which isn’t ready to be denied just yet.

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Banner refers to Falkland Islands conflict in 1982Players celebrate on the pitch with the messageThe Argentina players celebrated their World Cup win over England with a banner saying “Las Malvinas son Argentinas”, making reference to the 1982 Falklands war.Argentina were 1-0 down with five minutes to go of the semi-final in Atlanta but rallied and scored twice in quick succession to reach a second straight World Cup final, where they will face Spain in New Jersey on Sunday.The banner refers to the dispute over the territory, which is referred to as the Falkland Islands in Britain and Islas Malvinas in Argentina, which led to a 74-day conflict 44 years ago. More than 900 people – 649 Argentinians and 255 Britons – lost their lives in the conflict.Lisandro Martínez and Giovani Lo Celso held up the banner, grinning, and waved to fans in the stands. It was unclear where the banner had come from.It is ​not the first ​time the question of ​political banners has come up ­during the World Cup. ​Last month ‌in Los Angeles, ​Iranian Americans ​waved pre-revolutionary flags that are symbols of protest against the Tehran government when Iran played. Those matches proceeded without incident.After beating Switzerland in the quarter-final to set up a meeting against England, some Argentina players could be heard chanting: “For the Malvinas, for Diego [Maradona] and for Leo [Messi]’s last one.”The Argentina midfielder Rodrigo De Paul said: “We understand it’s a football game that transcends; it brings back memories of what Diego did. We sing songs about our Malvinas heroes, mainly to remember them, but we have to understand that it’s a football match and that the Malvinas have to be discussed elsewhere. What happened was an atrocity and we always remember the fallen, but what we want is to win this match to get to the final.”Fifa’s stadium code of conduct bans “banners, flags, flyers, apparel and other paraphernalia that are of a political, offensive, and/or discriminatory nature” inside stadiums. Fifa did not immediately reply to a request for comment.Argentina’s security minister, Alejandra Monteoliva, said on Tuesday that ‌enhanced security had been discussed at a meeting in the US on Monday. “There will be 1,600 officers. We want the celebration to be peaceful,” she told local radio in Argentina. “The entry of elements that have any type of provocative message, whether of political or racial content, is prohibited.”

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Lionel Messi was at his effervescent best while Harry Kane struggled to make an impactJordan Pickford Had little chance with either goal. Pulled off a sensational save from González but that will be forgotten now. 7Reece James Dominated his flank and fully justified being brought back into the side after injury. 7John Stones A rock at the back until the last 10 minutes when his lack of game time caught up with him. 7Marc Guéhi Mr Reliable in England’s defence didn’t put a foot wrong again and was unlucky to be on losing side. 7Djed Spence Has won over the doubters and then some. A Bobby Moore-esque tackle to stop Simeone. 8Elliot Anderson Another all-action display. Booked for taking out Messi brutally but belongs at this level. 7Declan Rice Looked far more his usual self. But had to be taken off as England tried to protect their lead. 6Morgan Rogers Preferred in unusual role on right flank and showed why, by setting up Gordon brilliantly. 7Jude Bellingham Fired up from the start, came close to losing his rag in injury time – couldn’t save England this time. 6Anthony Gordon Has come of age at this tournament. Will never forget scoring in a World Cup semi-final. 8Harry Kane It was from his long pass that England scored. But he will be hugely disappointed not to have had more of an impact. 5Substitutes: Ezri Konsa (for Gordon, 72) Slotted into back three but at fault for Martinez’s equaliser, 5. Dan Burn (for James 83) Third time unlucky after his cameos against Mexico and Norway, 5. Nico O’Reilly (for Rice 83) Could not prevent Messi’s cross for the winning goal. Ivan Toney (for Stones 90+3) Far too late to make an impact, 6. Marcus Rashford (for Spence 90+3) Tried his best to drag England level, 6.Emiliano Martínez No chance with Gordon’s goal but was largely a spectator for the rest of the match. 6Nahuel Molina Struggled to contain Spence’s and Gordon’s strong combination play down England’s left flank. 6Cristian Romero Squared up to Bellingham inside the first minute and showed some nifty footwork to get himself out of trouble. 8Lisandro Martínez Walked the tightrope after being booked in the first half so was no surprise to see him taken off. 7Nicolas Tagliafico Had his hands full with Rogers and it was from his error that Gordon was able to score. 5Leandro Paredes Early reducer on Anderson set the tone, but he could not exert his usual dominance in midfield. 5Enzo Fernández Inches away from an amazing goal in the first half before breaking England’s hearts with a stunning equaliser. 8Alexis Mac Allister So unlucky not to score after hitting both posts. The Liverpool man was back to his best. 8Giuliani Simeone Like father, like son. Always in the thick of things but couldn’t take his chance when clean through. 6Lionel Messi Some imperious touches and mazy runs that belied his age. Deserves to sign off on the biggest stage of them all. 9Julián Alvarez Caused huge problems for England down Argentina’s left flank all afternoon. Messi’s heir in waiting. 8Substitutes: Nicolás González (for Paredes 65) Denied equaliser by Pickford but added impetus to Argentina’s attacks, 8. Nicolás Otamendi (for L Martinez 72) Incredible that he is still playing at his age, 7. Gonzalo Montiel (for Molina 72) A massive upgrade on Molina as Argentina chased an equaliser, 7. Rodrigo De Paul (for Simeone 72) Surprise omission but made up for it by helping to change the game, 8. Lautaro Martínez (for Tagliafico 81) Argentina’s hero with a brilliant header, 8.

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England’s destiny is tournament heartbreak. The only question concerns when it comes and how the fates will contrive to make it as painful as possible. This was an implausibly brutal new low.Thomas Tuchel’s team had fought fire with fire on an occasion that was overloaded with shredded nerves. The first half was a physical fight; it was gripping all the same. And the possibilities seemed endless for England when Anthony Gordon put them in front shortly after half-time. A first appearance in the World Cup final since 1966 looked on.Argentina were not finished. There has been a feeling during this tournament that they are beatable, and yet nobody has beaten them. There is a reason for that. Their champion courage. They dug deep into it in the closing stages to complete one of their greatest fightbacks. That it came against England, the old enemy, made it even sweeter.The regrets belonged to England. Tuchel sought to preserve what he had in the final quarter with a switch to a back five, Ezri Konsa coming on for Gordon and playing as the right‑sided centre-half. The head coach had successfully seen out the 3-2 win against Mexico in the last 16 with five defenders on a night when his team were down to 10 men. There was no repeat here.The frustration was that the tactical shift invited Argentina to press on to the front foot. Tuchel played with fire. Argentina dominated the closing stages. It was their attack versus England’s defence and the equaliser was well signposted. That it came as late as the 86th minute only added to England’s devastation. They were so close.Enzo Fernández scored it with a fierce drive after Argentina had worked a short corner via Lionel Messi and England were floored before they could stagger on into extra time. They thought they had escaped when Alexis Mac Allister sent a low shot against the post. It was the second time he had hit the woodwork. But Messi recycled the move on the right, jinked and crossed deep. Lautaro Martínez was unmarked and when the Argentina substitute headed home England were primed to do likewise.It has been a strange tournament for Tuchel and his players, the feeling difficult to shake that the results up to this point had outstripped the performance levels. They did not do enough when it mattered the most against Argentina, especially in creative terms. They barely threatened Emi Martínez’s goal. And when defensive resilience was demanded towards the end, it was not there.Argentina deserved to advance to the final against Spain on Sunday. For England, there was only the beginnings of a familiar inquest.It was a night when the history framed everything. Nobody could ignore it and not only because of how loudly the Argentina supporters chanted the line about Las Malvinas in their World Cup song. The echoes could be felt from the pitches of Mexico 86, France 98, and Japan & South Korea 2002 – the most recent tournament clashes between the nations.The nervous tension pulsed and the first half was best summed up by the expected goals statistic: England’s stood at 0.05; Argentina’s was 0.03. The first effort on goal of any description did not arrive until the 33rd minute, John Stones heading well wide from a Declan Rice free‑kick. Fernández fizzed a drive high on 38 minutes.The tackles flew in and tempers were rarely far from boiling point. A snapshot of the first 45 minutes? It was when Messi got the better of Djed Spence in the 37th minute and then evaded challenges from Harry Kane and Gordon. A split second later, in came Elliot Anderson to halt him with a body check. The England midfielder, who revelled in the intensity of the contest, was booked. It was a long way from being the only tactical foul.England felt they shaded the war of attrition in the first half. They just had to stay patient and wait for their moment. It came in the 55th minute, shortly after Jordan Pickford had denied Julián Álvarez at the other end.One of Tuchel’s main moves at the start was to play Morgan Rogers at right midfield. The idea was to add a bit more physicality. But Rogers is a creative force and he was at the heart of the breakthrough. After Kane’s searching ball up the inside right was repelled only in part by Nico Tagliafico, Rice went wide to Rogers and it was just a lovely cross from him. Gordon worked the position on Nahuel Molina and the cool close-range finish had England in dreamland.At that point England had the belief and, in Spence, a man on a mission. The left-back had started with a determination to take on his opponents, to surge forward. He was fearless. And as Argentina tried to respond to the Gordon goal, they were denied when Spence crashed into a saving slide tackle on Giuliano Simeone. Spence celebrated it like a goal.Pickford did well to keep out a close-range Leandro Paredes header before the second-half hydration break but the tide had begun to turn. The feeling only intensified after England emerged for the final quarter in the back five. It was all Argentina. Mac Allister hit the post with a header when he had to score and Fernández forced Pickford into another save. Argentina would not be denied. England are coming home. Football is not coming with them.

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France’s captain has played with a sense of unfinished business but he will be 31 when the next World Cup beginsIt was only last month that Kylian Mbappé suggested all roads may lead to Florida. He was in sufficiently mischievous mood to reveal David Beckham had been chewing his ear off about a move to Major League Soccer, dangling the prospect of a reunion with Lionel Messi at Inter Miami.“We will see, I don’t know,” he said. “The American culture is different. There are no limits to ambitions, I like it.”Yet Mbappé will walk out in Miami on Saturday nursing clipped wings and thwarted aspirations. The third-place playoff retains some prestige given the names involved. But it pales in comparison with the broken dream of another final; the regrets from France’s semi-final defeat by Spain, their third in three years against the European champions, will linger into the American summer.France’s no-show on Tuesday makes the sands of time run a little faster for Mbappé. It feels a cruel trick that he will be 31 when the next World Cup comes around. At his current rate, he will have made about 700 appearances by then and there are no guarantees a body of work defined by explosive power can hold up into his fourth decade. Mbappé has nothing to prove, but this tournament had seemed a natural stage for a mid-career rubber stamping of his legacy.That may still come around in diluted form. No player has won two consecutive Golden Boots and, even when looking to the sky upon the final whistle and mopping his head with his shirt, Mbappé stood top of that ranking by virtue of having more assists than Messi. The pair were tied on eight goals.It is not quite enough for him. His frustration was made clear in a dissection that, interpreted one way, could be regarded as a rebuke to Didier Deschamps for tactical failures.France were outnumbered in midfield, Dani Olmo able to provide balance in a way Michael Olise could not, and Mbappé was seen only fleetingly before taking a number of pot shots in the later stages. They could not get the ball to him before that; ultimately any collective idea was sacrificed to the flailing hope that individual genius would, as so many times before, hold sway.The angst is greater because Mbappé had hit the ground running, shaking off an anticlimactic end to the season with Real Madrid and battering through the early challenges in France’s path. The sense of unfinished business was laid bare.“I would change Argentina 2022,” he has said when asked, if permitted, how he would rewrite the past. “That final comes to mind more than the one we won.”The hat-trick in Lusail and subsequent defeat on penalties are a sore that refuses to heal. Facing Messi and Argentina one last time in New Jersey could have been the palimpsest for a fresh version of the story and a coronation as the world’s undisputed best.Instead, a less glittering volume must begin. “We have to move on to the next chapter,” Mbappé said. “Because football waits for no one. We have to start over, put this failure behind us, and learn from it.”There is no suggestion he will call time prematurely on commitments with France. Zinedine Zidane will almost certainly succeed Deschamps and the tantalising question is whether Les Bleus’ two best players of all time can forge a partnership that works.Even if it passes the vibe check, Zidane has been out of the fray for five years since leaving Real. He and his captain must find a way to harness those moments of star quality while honing the kind of coherent method that has ultimately allowed Spain to outstrip France convincingly.What version of Mbappé will France find in 2030? It may depend on whether he has finally won a Champions League, with or without a European Championship title in two years’ time. It would have seemed unthinkable, when he tore a trail through Russia 2018, that a dozen years might pass without Mbappé claiming another of football’s majors.The opportunities will keep coming, but that prospect is, if nothing else, becoming a talking point. Mbappé would be repulsed by the very notion of long-term association with near misses.Maybe Beckham and Inter Miami will indeed tempt Mbappé one day, just as Messi was lured to a late-career role that has done no harm to his longevity for Argentina. Perhaps it would mean the World Cup tilts keep coming.In theory, Mbappé could carry France’s hopes to Saudi Arabia 2034 and even beyond. But it did not take a huge leap, on watching his features contort with multiple agonies at Dallas Stadium, to wonder whether his clearest shot at satisfying those big ambitions has drifted away.

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Broadcasters expect to have time to analyse the gameChannels planning for break to last 25 to 30 minutesITV and BBC are planning to screen Fifa’s controversial half-time show in full from Sunday’s final at the New York New Jersey Stadium, but remain in the dark over how long it will last.The Guardian revealed last month that there were concerns among broadcasters at the length of the half-time spectacle, which has been curated by Coldplay’s Chris Martin and will feature Madonna, Shakira and the K-pop boyband BTS. They are planning for the interval to last between 25 and 30 minutes.Both UK rights holders have decided to broadcast the show in full because, with the requirements to set up and remove the stage from the pitch, they anticipate having sufficient time to analyse the game as well.The laws of the game overseen by the International Football Association Board (Ifab) state that “players are entitled to an interval at half-time, not exceeding 15 minutes, and it may be altered only with the referee’s permission”. Fifa is therefore potentially breaching that but is not believed to have received any pushback from Ifab.The first matches in each of the host countries featured lengthy musical opening ceremonies, with Shakira and Burna Boy headlining an extensive pre-match show before Mexico beat South Africa in the Mexico City Stadium.Alanis Morissette and Michael Bublé headlined a show in Toronto before Canada v Bosnia and Herzegovina and Katy Perry fronted a performance before the USA’s first game against Paraguay.Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, has described the half-time show as “groundbreaking spectacle” that will “celebrate football, music and our shared values, ensuring a legacy that transcends the final whistle”.

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Luis de la Fuente’s final-bound team have been fuelled by togetherness and a commitment to each other that goes back a long wayOn the way out of the dressing room in Arlington, Luis de la Fuente gathered his “family” and delivered one last message before the World Cup semi-final against France. He had long known what he was going to say, if not exactly how – it’s what he has been saying for 50 days and more. “I’ll tell them that this is a unique stage, the kind of moment that may never be repeated again, and that we have to be ourselves,” he had suggested 18 hours earlier; now that idea crystallised in a line. “We’re facing one of the best lineups in the world,” the Spain coach told them, “but we’re the best team in the world.”By the time they made their way back in again, a voice was heard above the shouts, another line to encapsulate it all, to define this. It belonged to Marc Cucurella and it said: “What a fucking recital!” A call came in to De la Fuente, King Felipe on the phone saying pretty much the same thing, if a little more politely. On went the music, Jamaican (Bam Bam) blasting out, pizza was passed around, and they bounced about. Some did, anyway. Some just sat there taking in what they had done. “It was written: we started in Atlanta and we end in New York,” Dani Olmo said, but a semi-final is not supposed to be like this.Certainly not against them. Kylian Mbappé, Ousmane Dembélé, Michael Olise. Yeah, and? Another voice: “You ate him up!” And another: “Take him out your pocket!” “Pardon pardon,” Lamine Yamal posted. Three years in a row, three competitions, one result: in 2024 Spain had knocked France out of the Euros in the semi-final, in 2025 the same happened in the Nations League semi final, and now this, the World Cup. So maybe it is supposed to be like this; maybe everyone should have thought Spain were favourites like Spain did. But those other semi-finals were not like this; maybe no other semi-final has been.The stats say so. No semi-finallist has been reduced to as little as this since Sweden eight World Cups ago. And that, with apologies, was Sweden; this is France. It was not just about the result, it was about the way it was done. It’s not supposed to be so … easy? Not supposed to be played out to olés, French players beaten, chasing a ball they know they’re not going to be allowed to reach. They had already given up on a final that Spain would not allow them to reach either. On the touchline, Spain’s squad counted down, arms around each other. A thousand thoughts, sure, but no nerves, no tension.“The team is euphoric,” Rodri said. De la Fuente was asked about a line Luis Aragonés used to say about not celebrating until you have won something. He admires Aragonés, he said, how could he not, but he wasn’t having it. This was to be celebrated. “No, no,” he replied, “I’m not into these ‘literary’ or ‘journalistic’ phrases. I’m made of different stuff. What we have done is very hard, why would we not be happy? I value the journey, what we have done. Only one team can win the World Cup and whatever happens this is a success.”“It will be the game of our lives,” Rodri said, but maybe they had already played it, and it was a picture of who they are. France were a portrait too, a collection of players that didn’t know what to do, that had no response; Spain would not allow them one. Finalists four years ago and four years before, this generation was supposed to even better. They had scored more goals than anyone here, seemed unstoppable, yet they could not manage a shot on target until the final quarter against Spain. Their xG had gone from an average of 2.4 per game to 0.31, their lowest ever. They had allowed only 0.6xG against and Spain racked up 1.7. And that on a day when Spain’s game was about control more than creation.If this was about the stars, Lamine Yamal versus Mbappé, there was a clear winner again: that’s now 9-2 to the kid who just turned 19. But here comes the narrator’s voice: it was not about the stars. At a World Cup where much has been made of the big names turning up – Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland, Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Mbappé until he faced Spain – much of the discourse around Spain has been around when Lamine Yamal would turn up. Too much of the discourse has been around that. Because it suggests he hasn’t turned up, when he has, even if he hasn’t had his Big Night. And because this is a collective, a team. For all the spotlight, Lamine Yamal knows that too.Before the game, De la Fuente and Rodri had talked about Lamine Yamal remaining calm, not allowing the “anxiety” to take him, the urge to live up to the expectation. It was read as an attempt to protect a teenager, a psychological message about the pressure, the weight of responsibility, but it was tactical too. There are so many words to describe Spain’s performance against France, and many are superlatives, but one is disciplined. Lamine Yamal took fewer risks and rarely lost the ball: that was not timidity, it was part of the plan. And Spain executed it to perfection, aware of exactly what they had to do.Choose a player, and it’s there, all the way to the goalkeeper, Unai Simón, repeatedly out to meet Mbappé. Rodri, a player De la Fuente described as “made for our model”, won more duels than all France’s players put together and completed more passes than anyone else. Olmo had Juan Mata tweeting: “How he plays!” Fabián Ruiz has played for Spain 49 times and never lost. Pau Cubarsí is from a village so small it doesn’t have a football pitch but he may be the best centre-back at the World Cup, with the possible exception of Aymeric Laporte, who at the diaspora World Cup is one Frenchman who is going to the final.Cucurella has two assists and Pedro Porro two goals. Which may be what happens with attacking full-backs, only that’s twice as many goals as they have conceded. They have allowed fewer than 1.5 shots on target per game. Watch the Porro goal back and it all starts with Spain playing their way out from a tight corner, 100 metres away. Look at the heat map and Mikel Oyarzabal is a midfielder, all part of the plan. “Centre-backs don’t like having to come to there,” he said, offering an explanation of the mechanics. Sometimes his job, he says, is to “not get in the way”. The quiet man has five goals; no Spaniard has got more at a World Cup.If the start was slow, here they are, just where they always thought they would be, even if others didn’t. “It was planned to be in our best shape at the most important moment,” De la Fuente said. “We know France, how dangerous they are, but we also knew how to deactivate them. But in the end, it’s down to the players. However much you tell them something, it’s down to them to know how to find the spaces. Your pieces of paper and all the arrows aren’t worth much without them. Spanish players are the best precisely because of that interpretation of football. We started four years ago and we have been faithful to an idea, which is what brought us here.”There have been tweaks to that idea. Two years ago a virtue was made of Spain’s vertigo, that twist on tiki taka provided by two flying wingers, and now it is back to the control that defined them before. But there is a line of continuity, as well as an intense competitiveness, a commitment to the collective and to each other, going back a long time. De la Fuente’s tightest embraces were for those with whom he won the 2015 Under-19s Euros: “We said: ‘Back then could you ever have imagined being here?’”Maybe not in 2015, no, but he knew. The Spanish generation that lifted the World Cup in 2010 are held up as some untouchable image of perfection, a team you cannot possibly match; but this generation, European champions like them, are in the World Cup final too. And that 2010 team never had a performance like this. Never mind the “names”, De la Fuente kept telling people that Spain’s players were the best. He told them that too, all together, just before they went out and showed the world it was true.

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⚽ Kick-off in Atlanta is 3pm EST/8pm BST/5am AEST⚽ Golden Boot | Player guide | And get Football DailyThomas Tuchel believes England will face an Argentina team “fuelled by history” in their World Cup semi-final in Atlanta on Wednesday. It will be the sixth time that the nations have met at the tournament with the previous three coming after the Falklands war of 1982.The most controversial game was in the 1986 quarter-finals when Diego Maradona scored his “Hand of God” goal and Argentina won 2-1 en route to the title. Argentina triumphed on penalties in the last 16 in 1998 when David Beckham was sent off. Beckham gained a measure of revenge four years later when he scored from the penalty spot for a 1-0 group-stage victory. England won 3-1 at the group phase in 1962 and 1-0 in the quarter-finals in 1966, when they went on to become champions. Continue reading...

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England World Cup winner died in 2020 but his death was never reported by authorities to the coroner’s officeThe England footballer and World Cup winner Nobby Stiles died with a brain condition caused by repeatedly heading a football, a coroner has ruled.Stiles, a tenacious, tough-tackling midfielder described by Geoff Hurst as the “heart and soul” of the 1966 World Cup-winning team, died in 2020 but his death was not reported by authorities to the coroner’s office.His family have campaigned for a full investigation into his death. Stiles’s son John has previously said that football “killed” his father.On Wednesday in Stockport, the coroner Alison Mutch said the death of 78-year-old Stiles was contributed to by a brain condition caused by repeatedly heading a football.The inquest heard that Stiles, who played for Manchester United, headed a football about 140,000 times during his career.At the end of his life Stiles had Alzheimer’s disease and had to sell his World Cup winner’s medals to fund his care.Analysis of Stiles’s brain showed that his severe dementia was as a result of Alzheimer’s disease but also the condition chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which has been associated with head trauma from heading a ball.Dr Daniel Du Plessis, a neuropathology expert, told the court: “I’m quite convinced his heading the football that many times has caused his CTE.”Mutch, the senior coroner for South Manchester, asked Du Plessis: “You are saying repeated heading of the ball is the cause of his CTE?”Norbert Stiles, born in Collyhurst, Manchester, was capped 28 times by England and played for United nearly 400 times. He is fondly remembered for his victory jig at the 1966 defeat of West Germany, clutching the Jules Rimet trophy in one hand and his false teeth in the other.His family have been campaigning for football authorities to do more to help ex-players cope with injuries they claim were caused during their playing days.John Stiles, the head of the Football Families for Justice (FFJ) group, told the inquest that his father was “very humble” about his achievements.“It never really changed him,” he said. “If you went into his house you would never know he was a footballer. He was very much a family man, football was left at the door. The family was always the first priority.”He said his father “never talked, he never bragged” about being a World Cup winner. “He was proud of it but we were always much more proud of the father he was than the footballer,” he said.John Stiles said footballs in his father’s days weighed about 16 ounces (450g) but would get heavier when wet.Dozens of former footballers and their families, including Stiles’s, are suing the Football Association, the Football Association of Wales and the English Football League over claims they were “negligent and in breach of their duty of care” to the former players.In January an inquest into the death of Gordon McQueen, 70, an ex-Scotland, Manchester United and Leeds United defender, found that heading the ball was “likely” to have contributed to a brain injury which was a factor in his death. McQueen was also diagnosed with CTE.

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We often call England v Argentina a grudge match – a simple story of mutual hatred. But the truth is far more complex, says the Guardian’s Jonathan Liew.It began with British influence, raising Argentina as a ‘faithful son’ in their own image through polo, tea, and football. But decades of nationalist rejection, iconic World Cup clashes, and a war over the Falkland Islands turned them into ultimate footballing antagonists.Yet, the two teams haven't played a match in over twenty years. Lionel Messi has never faced England. In an era of over-saturated, commercialised sport, this scarcity has kept the romance of their rivalry alive. Because underneath the bad blood, there is a deep, mutual fascination: two nations that probably revere each other far more than they’d ever care to admit.

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Kylian Mbappé, Michael Olise and Ousmane Dembélé blew teams away in the early rounds of the World Cup but France had no answers when faced with Spain’s tactical superiorityFor the last few weeks, France had seemed destined to reach their third straight World Cup final, but in the end they were overrun by a more tactically coherent Spain team in the semi-finals. Once France went behind to Mikel Oyarzabal’s penalty in the 22nd minute – the first time they had trailed in the tournament – Didier Deschamps’ side never looked like mounting a comeback. There would be no bolt from the blue from Kylian Mbappé, with the match instead plodding along to its logical conclusion. Where did it go wrong and what will come next?France’s all-star attack had been praised across the globe for the last six weeks. Having scored 13 goals in their first four matches, their frontline looked unstoppable. Against Spain, though, the forwards did not combine meaningfully with one another and their lack of clinical edge was laid bare.France were 2-0 down before they had a shot on target. Mbappé, the second top scorer in men’s World Cup history, failed to have a shot on target. As had been the case in the last two matches, Mbappé’s attacking impact was blunted by the need to drop deeper into midfield, and his first shot did not arrive until midway through the second half.Michael Olise, who was compared to Michel Platini for his playmaking performances in the group stage, lost the ball 20 times and struggled to find his bearings. Ousmane Dembélé did not trouble Unai Simón until the final minutes of the match. Of the starting quartet, the most significant impact on the match came from Bradley Barcola in his defensive contributions, with Lucas Digne unable to contain Lamine Yamal.France’s forwards, who had looked so at ease swapping positions and combining in the early stages of the competition, appeared increasingly isolated from each other as the knockout stages progressed. In locking down the middle third of the pitch, Spain succeeded in keeping the forwards distant from each other and cut off from the rest of the team.Adrien Rabiot was the only France player who repeatedly broke down the Spanish lines, but he was hamstrung by the yellow card he picked up in the 10th minute. Deschamps’ decision to take him off at half-time drastically decreased France’s chances of winning the midfield battle. Alongside the recently injured Aurélien Tchouaméni, who often found himself playing too far back to have any influence on the match, Manu Koné was unable to replicate his standout performance against Morocco.Deschamps made a some like-for-like switches but they had no impact on the momentum of the game. Desiré Doué and Rayan Cherki were confined to isolated pockets of space, and Théo Hernandez did not fare any better than Digne against Spanish attacks down the right wing.It would be difficult to argue France underestimated their opponents; Deschamps repeatedly singled out Spain as the favourites to win the tournament. Whether this was a sincere assessment or an attempt to reduce the pressure on his own team, his observation was backed up by recent experience.Counting the last Olympic final, France have now lost four consecutive matches to Spain, all in semi-finals or finals. Spain’s midfield supremacy ultimately made the difference in all of those matches. For the second time in three years, France were overrun by a midfield consisting of Rodri, Fabián Ruiz and Dani Olmo.Spain’s midfield superiority extends beyond matches between the senior sides. Whatever the lineup, whatever the age group, Spain have a clearly defined style that is replicated across all of their teams as part of an all-encompassing strategy. The same cannot be said of France’s various teams, which often seem to be built on a case-by-case basis in response to the individual talent available. Up against a deeply ingrained tactical setup, those individuals have been thwarted at every turn.Deschamps will end his 14-year tenure after Saturday’s third-place playoff in Miami. Finishing on the podium at three World Cups would not make for bad reading, and would surely place Deschamps as France’s best-ever head coach, but the lasting verdict will be that he could have achieved more given the talent at his disposal.The freedom Deschamps afforded his forwards in this tournament could also have been seen as a transition towards the Zinedine Zidane era. Zidane was famously non-interventionist when it came to coaching his front three at Real Madrid, and the depth of talent in the France squad will allow for a similar approach.In any case, Zidane’s appointment is likely to bring a degree of continuity to the national team. Like Deschamps, Zidane is above all a pragmatist on the sidelines. He is also an icon who commands respect in the dressing room – even more so than Deschamps. There are reasons to be optimistic. He will have a relatively young squad and will have goodwill from fans, players and decision-makers.The 2018 and 2022 World Cup campaigns were ultimately the culmination of Deschamps’ tactics of control and pragmatism, which took several tournaments to perfect before they became a winning formula. That approach had evidently run its course by Euro 2024 and he was right to switch things up. It was perhaps overly ambitious, though, to expect such a radical change to click straight away. France breezed into the latter stages, but they failed against Spain.This new-look France team may realise its full potential in four years’ time under Zidane. If that is the case, Deschamps’ legacy will be winning a World Cup and also laying the foundations for the new era.This is an article by Get French Football News