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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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Ex-Concacaf executive Mel Brennan reflects on the Fifa corruption scandal, missed reforms and why football’s governance remains stubbornly opaqueMel Brennan has seen every level of world football. “I know what the World Cup looks like from the 17th floor of Trump Tower … I know what it looks like from a grass-strewn field in Trinidad where children cannot play because money that was supposed to maintain it went somewhere else entirely,” he says.Brennan worked as an executive at Concacaf during the corrupt reign of its infamous former president Jack Warner and the late general secretary Chuck Blazer, who once helped run the organization from Trump Tower.Brennan was also a confidential source for investigative journalists and law enforcement as they looked into the corruption that was rife within the organization for decades. Brennan’s book about his time at Concacaf, Fixing Football is out now.“Football survived Sepp Blatter,” he writes, optimistically, in the book. “It survived Jack Warner. It survived Chuck Blazer. And it will survive Gianni Infantino.”The Guardian sat down with Brennan to talk about Fifa, Concacaf and the future of the game.Were you surprised when law enforcement raided a Zurich hotel and Concacaf headquarters in Miami in 2015 to indict so many Fifa and Concacaf officials? No. The FBI had stopped and started dialog with me about what was going on at Concacaf. On two separate occasions I was on my way to New York to [meet] with investigators and they said “Wait – we’re not quite ready”. I literally turned my car around. So I knew something was percolating. On the other hand I never really thought there would be comeuppance with this group.Why did you think there would be no accountability for Concacaf bosses after everything you saw while working there?When I was with Concacaf the office was on the 17th floor of Trump Tower. Chuck Blazer lived on the 49th floor. Before that, Chuck and Jack Warner shared an apartment on the 10th floor across from Donald Trump and Marla Maples. They were all so intertwined and so much a part of the interlocking elite that accountability was a distant dream. I would imagine that Chuck, Jack, and others would do anything to stay out of jail. These were not gangsters. These were opportunistic cockroaches. They were not tough guys. They would run with any real sustained sunlight. [Chuck Blazer became an undercover informant for FBI and IRS investigators in 2011.]Were you surprised Concacaf featured so prominently in the 2015 scandals?No. I felt like Concacaf was among the least competent of the continental actors. You had other confederations with people who were European glitterati or ran legitimate businesses but you didn’t really have that in Concacaf. Jack was a former history teacher but he knew that the Caribbean was a sleeping giant that could subvert the Guatemalan-Mexican football power structure at the time. And you had Chuck who was an extractor but you couldn’t really point to a lot that he had built. They were not sophisticated corporate guys. They were not sophisticated business guys. They were born opportunists. That the mistakes were so easily revealed to law enforcement was not a surprise.Blazer and Warner had tight control over Concacaf but there are usually always enablers in these environments. Was that the case at Concacaf?In a larger sense, all of us were enablers but I think that the Concacaf executive committee and the Concacaf member associations would have made a different choice with different political pressure at the time. From 1990 to about 2015 they were operating within a North American context where the world’s sport was sixth or seventh on the media table. It was arguable that wrestling had more media attention. So the media landscape also has to take its fair share of the blame. Often folks would want to maintain access and instead of doing investigative journalism that requires document review and truth-telling, and speaking truth to power, it was more reporting and more like Pravda rather than “the institution said this now lets’s really dig in to see if this is true or not and if it is not true why didn’t they tell us the truth?” There was not a lot of that in the LA Times or the New York Times. Everybody played a role in enabling this.So Blazer and Warner lined their pockets with cash from deals they made. Why do we care how they made money? The cost was that people didn’t gain access to sporting opportunities [they were entitled to through]. The football bubble and the rise in the dollars available for them should have created access. If you are a girl and you play sport, you only have a small chance to go pro but if you play sport and you stay in sport you are more likely to lead an organization as an adult. But these types of opportunities were lost for so many because Jack and Chuck were too busy acting like they were building fields and programming but Chuck and Jack were actually on a game show called “Who is Stealing Money?”. And they were on it every week.Where was the US, Canada, and Mexico – all big players in Concacaf during this? People like [former US Soccer president ] Sunil Gulati were fully present when I was there. The role that Sunil played under [his predecessor] and then as US Soccer president himself felt more like him being a World Bank guy – which is the world he comes from. Admiring this economic engine that Chuck and Jack had built from a distance rather than deploying the power of US Soccer to shine a light on this stuff and make a difference.In your book Fixing Football you recall an amazing scene at a Concacaf conference in Miami where women, who were not delegates, left the hotel en masse at 5am. There were more than 15 and less than 30 [women]. All from the same floor. And you see how they are dressed and you see the time and see what is going on. You feel like you want to call somebody because maybe you are crazy. Everyone else who was there and had been [at Concacaf events previously] was, like, “Well, yeah, let’s get them in the car and get them off …”Has anything changed at Fifa since your era?Transparency International laid out a framework that would have [made things less opaque at Fifa]. Fifa could have meetings of the Fifa Council that are broadcast live and minutes that are in real time. We could see the bank accounts in real time if they wanted us to see it. Some cockroaches have scattered and other cockroaches came in but the overall smell remains the same.Was Victor Montagliani the right person to lead Concacaf after the 2015 crisis?Victor Montagliani had an opportunity to demonstrate he was the right person to lead. There was a moment where Concacaf could have gone in a different direction: democratic, transparent, inclusive, diverse. Instead, what Concacaf did was rely on the fact that [Montagliani] was not Jack and Chuck to say that this meant change. In the end, we still cannot see and it is not clear how Concacaf doles out its dollars. The question is, will Montagliani and other leaders step back just a moment to build something that would matter beyond themselves? That would matter for more people. I was naive to think that Montagliani could be this radical change when most of the status quo is still in place.Should Concacaf be making sponsorship deals with Saudi Arabia and accepting investment in the region from the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund?Any nation state that is murdering journalists has to be marginalized. I would not want to see Concacaf engaging with Saudi Arabia without some sort of weight to the decision-making process of sponsorships and partnerships that included human rights records and human rights abuses. How Saudi Arabia treats women and the most vulnerable matters. If Concacaf is considering a partnership with them then they should have a mechanism that is going to evaluate some of [the issues]. They might not get a deal at all but to not have those considerations in the conversation as to whether you are going to partner somebody is an abandonment of the spirit that makes sport matter at all.Does the USA, Mexico, and Canada hosting this year’s World Cup make this tournament a success for the sport in the region?It is an opportunity. [But] who gets left behind? In my local town in Maryland, all [organized] youth soccer is white kids. But a 10-minute walk from my house a park is reserved by Latino communities but these two communities don’t meet. One community is going to the Dallas Cup and the Florida youth soccer tournaments and the other one is not. There is something wrong here and there is an opportunity for us to reshape how this looks or to call for and get better answers from our leaders as to why it looks the way it looks.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Only a handful of FAs have not declared their supportGianni Infantino has the formal endorsement of more than 200 countries for re-election as Fifa’s president despite the climate of unrest that has swirled since the scandal surrounding Folarin Balogun’s reprieve from suspension.The Guardian understands only a handful of Fifa’s 211 member associations are still to send letters of support for Infantino, who is on course to be voted into a fourth term by a landslide at its congress in March. A small number of European countries are among the outliers, with Germany the highest-profile FA yet to provide official backing.Candidates must be put forward by 18 November, before which time letters can also be withdrawn or transferred to a different contender. But Infantino is currently the only runner and some FAs feel they have, nonetheless, come under persistent pressure from within Fifa to confirm their allegiance. In theory that should not be permitted under Fifa’s ethics code.It would take a political earthquake to dislodge Infantino. Although there remains disquiet after Donald Trump admitted lobbying Fifa to review the USA striker Balogun’s red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina, the vast majority of it is festering among European FAs and adjacent bodies. Infantino does not need to count on Europe’s support to land an overwhelming mandate and, in any case, most of the continent has confirmed its endorsement for his re-election. The English FA is among those to have sent its letter well in advance of the World Cup.The topic of a Europe-backed candidate to run against Infantino has gained legitimacy behind closed doors over the past 10 days but the prospect of multiple federations settling upon a name feels remote.Fifa’s member associations will convene in New York on Saturday although, with Infantino helming the meeting, the subject of recent scandals is unlikely to be an agenda item. The World Cup’s financial performance, and any subsequent benefits that could be passed on to the FAs, is more likely to be a topic of discussion.

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The broadcaster’s tournament coverage was a mix of flat and fizz. It could also have been a long farewell with World Cup rights up for grabsGoodbye, then, to Fox, to its band of upbeat Brits and grown men dressed in suits and sneakers. Goodbye to constant cutaways to Gianni Infantino in the stands, his eyebrows a mournful tipi, his nude head sprinkling under the summer sun. Goodbye to Landon Donovan and his special gift for announcing every celebrity sighting (“And there’s Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz”) as if delivering the results of a colonoscopy. Goodbye to Rebecca Lowe saying “OK, OK” whenever she’s needed one of her on-set personalities to zip it so she can throw to a break. Goodbye to the momentum graph, which only flashed on screen when a match’s momentum needed no explanation; goodbye to “no golden goal” on the scorebug during extra time, referencing a rule that has not been in force at a World Cup for 24 years; goodbye to the connected ball, which never seemed connected when we needed connection most.Goodbye to Geoff Shreeves, Fox’s middle-aged Oliver Twist chirruping on the sideline for the approval of his American masters. Goodbye to Tom Rinaldi, to his pocket squares and his “lyrical” meditations on balls and planets and stars or whatever. Goodbye to Chef Nick, now forced to rein in the extravagance of his early contributions (kangaroo corndogs, fufu chicken tikka masala) in the face of the tournament’s gastronomically subdued final four. And goodbye to Jameis Winston, the Fox fan correspondent, whose distressingly antic and sweaty stadium dispatches gave him the unvarying appearance of a man being electrocuted in the middle of a baptism.Goodbye to it all: Fox has been the English-language home of the World Cup on US TV since 2018, but with the media rights to 2030 and beyond still up for grabs, the future remains uncertain and potentially Fox-less. “Fox Sports, World Cup broadcaster” was an eight-year sociological experiment conducted by Harvard University. The study is now complete; thank you for your time.Was this World Cup on Fox as bad as we thought it would be? It was not. But was it good? It was not. Or rather: it was good only in parts. For me, the abiding TV image of this summer of soccer will be the glasses of beer plonked before each guest on James Corden’s murderously unfunny late night show. Throughout the tournament these beers have remained three-quarters full, headless, and flat – and have become, in time, their own potent metaphor. Even at America’s own World Cup, Fox has steadfastly refused to give us the full pour.To be clear, 2026 is a distinct improvement on what came before. And yes, it’s always possible to watch on Telemundo or mute, but this is a review for the masochists who like their punishment delivered in English with the sound on. For those who didn’t witness it, it’s impossible to overstate how abominable the coverage of the 2022 World Cup truly was. Fox, learning the lessons of that disaster, wisely rebalanced its on-air talent pool for this tournament to include fewer hapless Americans and more elite foreigners. Lowe has been predictably terrific in the main anchor’s chair, holding an unruly panel of talent together with the stern mercy of a beloved schoolteacher. Jules Breach and Pien Meulensteen have brought much of the same vim to Fox’s coverage of the lower-profile games, while never quite dispelling the impression that they’re about to announce the next housemate to be kicked off the set of Big Brother. Speaking of which: with some of the world’s most historic skylines at its disposal, Fox bafflingly decided to park its expensively assembled team indoors, in a bland LA studio designed with curved graphic panels to resemble the airless rec room of some tech unicorn on the brink of insolvency. Between the makeshift stadium desks and this glitching green screen, the whole production has felt small and decarbonated. Manhattan? The Hollywood Hills? The skyway futurism of downtown Atlanta? Forget all that: here’s a corporate basement instead.The studio pundits have likewise offered a mix of fizzy and flat. John Obi Mikel has the gravitas to pull off a line like “The game needs a goal” and not sound like a complete dope, while Peter Schmeichel has huffed and interjected his way through the tournament like a perpetually disappointed dad, his contribution defined by the constant, pedantic insistence that Argentina won the last World Cup “three and a half years ago”. Thierry Henry has been uniformly superb, able to switch from tactical analysis to lip-quivering bombast with the assurance of a striker in total command of his own change of pace.Zlatan Ibrahimović mumbled through the first few weeks but grew into the tournament, eventually achieving a pleasant equilibrium between expertise, empathy, and disdain (for Ronald Koeman above all). Once he ditches the tedious “I am Zlatan” routine and allows himself to display his full emotional and conversational range, Ibrahimović is a fine pundit. Without Clarence Seedorf’s thoughtfulness and genial rumble of a laugh, Fox’s coverage of the World Cup would have been 10% inferior. Alexi Lalas? You might say I’m not a fan.As the mockery of Lalas online threatened to swallow the World Cup whole a few weeks ago, Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks went on the defensive. “Lex has been the cornerstone of our soccer coverage for as long as I can remember,” Shanks said in an interview. “He’s the straw that stirs the drink.” Putting aside the vile image this conjures of viewers needing to suck Alexi Lalas to ingest the “drink” of the World Cup (I know hydration breaks have been a big talking point this tournament, but Gianni, if you’re reading, do NOT use this as a basis for further “reform” in 2030), let’s think about the metaphors here. Lalas is a cornerstone (solid) and a straw (solid) in contact with a drink (liquid). Why not go all the way, Eric, and make Lalas a gas? After all, vaporizing Alexi is what many of us have spent years calling for, and the man already generates a good amount of wind, so he’s halfway to gaseousness already.Fox’s allegiance to its resident tap dancer is emblematic of a broader rot that has held the network back this summer, even as it’s tried to meet the grandeur of a World Cup on home soil. Take the Iranian team’s arrival in the US under the cloud of an illegal war launched by the US itself: the Fox analysts hardly even mentioned it, waving the war and all its associated inhumanity away as mere “noise”. Fifa’s extraordinary capitulation to Donald Trump to suspend Folarin Balogun’s red card ban and allow the US striker to take the field against Belgium? Well, it was regrettable, but the card never should have been given, so: play on! Unbearably high ticket prices? Ads during the hydration breaks? The US government’s discriminatory system of visa bonds for visitors from certain World Cup-participating countries? Who is the host broadcaster to disagree with – or even raise – any of this? Fox has been a perfectly pliant and apolitical vessel for the most consumingly political World Cup of our lives.Even the choice of Winston as Fox’s man in the stands carried a powerful whiff. The NFL quarterback began the tournament jumping about half-naked and has ended it barking at the screen in frankly terrifying fashion. But the real problem here is one of casting rather than performance. Only Fox would think to make its “fun” fan correspondent for this World Cup a man whose Wikipedia page includes a hefty “Controversies” tab. Are you a professional athlete with an entry on the internet’s encyclopedia that includes the sub-headings “Sexual assault allegation”, “Shoplifting incidents”, and “2017 groping allegation”? Good news: you may have a bright career on Fox ahead of you.Amid all the chattering excellence of the Lowe-led New Fox, it’s been useful to have reminders of how self-parodyingly bad Old Fox can still be. The unpredictability of the draw meant that the US team did not play on the Fourth of July. To compensate, Fox handed the reins to its stalwart Americans – Rob Stone, Clint Dempsey, Donovan and Lalas – at a live set in sweltering Philadelphia, where they were assisted in their coverage of the day’s matches by a marching band left at a loose end after the city canceled its holiday parade on account of extreme heat. In place of another exhibition of Pochball, Fox gave us some decommissioned trombonists powering through a rendition of Anchors Aweigh while Lalas waved a huge American flag outside Independence Hall to what appeared to be a crowd of 30 people on the verge of expiry under the Anthropocene sun. Somewhere, I’m sure, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin and the boys were all proudly looking on, safe in the knowledge that Fox Sports has carried on the legacy of elite cable TV programming for which they fought the British 250 years ago.Stone, demoted into a secondary anchor role amid his employer’s Anglo ascendancy, has been perhaps the biggest loser of this World Cup, but he’s nobly attempted to maintain a brave face. “Stoney” is the type of steady pro who can deliver the words “Your Fox starting lineups, brought to you by American Express” without drama, or gather every one of his 29 years of major broadcast experience into a line like “Deep-fried Mars bar – that’s a real thing in a lot of country fairs here in the United States as well”, which he dropped at the end of Chef Nick’s food battle between the Scottish Mars bar and Brazilian picanha. (The meat won in a knockout, for anyone wondering.) Ahead of the last-32 match between Brazil and Japan, Fox’s No 2 man introduced a feature on joga bonito with the words, “We paid a visit to Brazil to learn more about the roots of Joe Go Bonito”, making it sound like someone called Joseph had just gone absolutely mental on the dried tuna flakes at his local okonomiyaki spot. Did the moment get beyond him, or was Stone just hungry? Ultimately it’s this type of material that has kept us glued to the screen this summer, even as Fox’s coverage has threatened to become boringly professional.The World Cup, as I’ve written elsewhere, is always a drama of language, and wrangling foreign names into English can be hard, but this year’s installment has been uncommonly rich in mispronunciation and misunderstanding. Amid the usual roll call of manglings – I’ve counted about 12 different versions of “Quiñones”, “Türkiye” has veered from “Turk-eye-ah” to “Turkey: yay!”, and Lionel Messi’s first name has consistently been rendered like Lionel Richie’s – Fox has never stopped innovating, transforming football’s traditional halves into quarters and difficult last names into completely new characters. Raúl Jiménez has emerged as “Jim Ennez”, Marc Cucurella has become “Cuckoo Rela”, like he’s the crazy relative no one in the family talks about, and Japan left-back Takehiro Tomiyasu is now “Tommy Yiasou”, the wisecracking veteran waiter at a Greek restaurant that’s been feeding families since 1978.“We’ve spent a lot of time practicing the names of all the players in this World Cup, but there’s not much to worry about when you have a player called Ben Old coming on for Joe Bell”, observed Jacqui Oatley in the group match between Belgium and New Zealand, exhibiting the kind of dry wit that has made her one of the standout performers of the summer. I used to find her on-air partner Warren Barton’s insistence on crossing as the highest footballing art boorish, but as I’ve listened to him more over the years and tactical fashion has swung the way of set pieces, I’ve come to appreciate the back-to-the-land simplicity of his on-field philosophy (“Get it wide, get it in”). Stu Holden will forever look and sound like he’s just shown up for the first day of his summer job at a small town gas station, and there were many moments in the early stages of this tournament when Fox’s chief color guy was hyping up every routine trap and forward jog from Christian Pulisic as if “Captain America” was the second coming of Garrincha, and not a legspreading menswear model gearing up for a big summer of rest. But once the US games ended Holden was able to show the degree to which he’s matured as an analyst; his ability to convey in-game tactical fluctuations and capture the World Cup’s defining dramas have made this comfortably his best professional outing yet in the commentary box.Other announcers have fared rather worse. Darren Fletcher won points for noting during England’s first knockout match that “if it’s coming home, it’s taking a while to get there”, but lost them all for his execrable “siuuu” to mark Cristiano Ronaldo’s first goal against Uzbekistan, which sounded like someone dying mid-orgasm. In a World Cup that has seen much important and difficult work done to fit America’s artificial turf NFL stadiums with soccer-friendly grass, the reforestation of Donovan’s head still stands out as this tournament’s most impressive single feat of terraforming. But the proceeding hairline’s contributions this tournament have also proved an important modern truth: you can replant a bald head, but if you have a voice like a leaf blower, you’re stuck with it for life.John Strong, the play-by-play anchor of Fox’s top announcer team, has used this World Cup to launch a new style of ejaculatory emphasis in his commentary, by which he goes low then SUDDENLY GOES HIGH to make up for his chronic inability to match the excitement and personality of proceedings on the pitch. Whether describing plays (“Djed SPENCE, cuts it BACK, knocked DOWN, Declan RICE”) or throwing to a break (“Forty-five minutes down, FORTY-FIVE TO GO here in Seattle”), Strong has never met a sentence that could not be improved by division into this basic low-high dichotomy. To which the only reasonable response is: Shut UP, John STRONG, we’ve had ENOUGH, of this STYLE, of COMMENTARY, which is ANNOYING, and SUCKS, and never ENDS, even WHEN, there’s nothing HAPPENING, on the FIELD.Lowe, Breach, Oatley, Barton: Fox’s strongest performers have been mostly English, while the weak links are all homegrown. The level of mainstream media punditry about soccer in the US may be painfully low (“Could this be the year that France finally gets it done and they win the World Cup?” ESPN’s Stephen A Smith recently mused of the two-time champions), but is Fox’s collection of zesty Englishwomen, nonchalant Euros and all-American idiots the best we can hope for? There’s no question that British commentators, anchors and voices bring a certain romance, a plummy authority, to coverage of the sport. But I’ve long argued that American soccer needs more Americans on air, especially since the sport as it’s actually lived and discussed throughout the US bears little resemblance to the witless, bloviating face it’s given on screen. This country’s fans deserve better than Fox: why can’t American networks, pundits and analysts be the ones to deliver it?The incumbent will face stiff competition for the rights to the 2030 World Cup, and all these questions – plus the more elemental consideration of cost – will no doubt weigh heavily on the bidding. Fox has run constant plugs this past month for an enticing menu of shows, including Kitchen Nightmares, Nation’s Dumbest and The Quiz with Balls. But for those uninterested in sticking around to witness Ice-T’s struggle to spell the word “guarantee” or Gordon Ramsay’s likening of a set of poorly executed meatballs to “turds”, the road stops now. After eight years of Fox stinking up our screens every big tournament summer, we reach the end: the end of “players to watch, sponsored by Adidas”, of “keys to the match, sponsored by Jeep”, of “your moment of the half, sponsored by Visa”, of “your moment of the match, sponsored by Kinder Bueno”. Which brings us, at last, to your World Cup conclusion, sponsored by Aaron Timms: thank you for everything, Fox – and please don’t come back!

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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 mercurial performance at the back was a far cry from the gaffe-prone Spurs captain we’ve become accustomed to seeingAs Cristian Romero readied to receive a pass 10 yards from his goalline, Jude Bellingham and Anthony Gordon sensed a mistake in the making. The center-back’s posture was not ideal after he took a scoot backwards to collect, facing the left sideline as his opponents lustily converged. He would only have half a second to settle a bouncing ball, shift his momentum, and find a passing lane in the rapidly closing seam between the England duo.Easier said than done on most days, but this particular Wednesday was not most days. First touch: ball settled. Second touch: right foot shunting the ball to his left. Third touch: left foot, ball coolly slotted to an awaiting Nahuel Molina.Less than a minute later, Romero received a yellow card for a tactical bear hug on Bellingham. Small potatoes; the real, imminent disaster had already been averted.Such is the duality of the man they tried to dispossess. This wasn’t Cristian Romero, the gaffe-prone captain of a historically poor Tottenham. This was Cristian Romero, the mercurial but mostly dependable anchor of Argentina’s defense.At Tottenham, he led a squad of infamously bad passers through a second consecutive relegation scrap. He is among one of the Premier League’s Most Wanted given his defensive candor, handed yellow cards like they were fliers for an angsty nightclub.As the season plodded on, his tendency to leave a little extra in his challenges was more of a selection headache for whoever was managing Spurs that weekend than a motivator of his moribund teammates.As Spurs repeatedly folded once an opponent opened the scoring, Romero grew disillusioned. In April, a season-ending injury left him in tears – not just the culmination of an unusually frustrating campaign, but a viable threat to his World Cup duties. So he sought joy from a familiar fount.He drew ire for his initial plan to skip Tottenham’s final match, readying to visit boyhood Belgrano for a match against River Plate. Sensing the blowback, Romero returned to London and watched on as Tottenham retained their place in the Premier League before joining the post-match sighs of relief. The task complete, Romero returned to Argentina, the far more joyous alternative to his day job, and finished his recovery in time for the World Cup.As is true for most of La Albiceleste, pulling on the white-and-blue turns Romero into one of 11 bleeding hearts who leave no yard uncovered and no stud unshown for the good of the cause. Partnered with Lisandro Martínez, he is the relative hardman, often the final obstacle between an attacker and Emiliano Martínez. Save for Lionel Messi and the Aston Villa goalkeeper, Romero has arguably been Argentina’s most consistent player en route to their third World Cup final in four tournaments.Compared to his responsibilities at Tottenham last season, Romero is slightly more entrusted with linking Argentina’s defense to their midfield in possession. The more stable structure around him hinders his proclivity to leave his post and get baited into silly fouls, as Spurs’ opponents managed to repeatedly ensnare him in that same trap last season. He also enjoys being one of Messi’s most trusted targets to win attacking headers. Argentina’s great escape against Egypt began when Romero assumed his secondary role for club and country: a makeshift target man who scampers parallel to his striker when in possession and chasing a goal. Egypt were not equipped to account for this in the 79th minute, as he snuck into space between Ramy Rabia and Yasser Ibrahim to thunk home a looping cross from Messi and spark the ensuing comeback.Whatever is necessary for the task at hand, Romero will commit to the bit. On Sunday, that will mean accounting for Mikel Oyarzabal’s nimble movement and not letting Spain’s stable of deft dribblers bait him into unnecessary fouls. Argentina will need to test Spain’s resolve, as few teams have truly tried to outmuscle the finalists since Cape Verde’s stunning draw in the group stages. That may sound like a job too great for Cristian Romero of Tottenham, but that’s not who you are watching in this World Cup. Cristian Romero of Argentina knows better – if only just.Time will tell whether he gets a rosy welcome upon rejoining Spurs, though he is unlikely to be bothered by the potential of jeers. Supporters may be more inclined to laud Djed Spence for his industrious efforts against Argentina than Romero, caught yelling at a bemused Bellingham after the final whistle in Atlanta.By then he was fully immersed in his alternate persona, a crucial member of a team that will fiercely defend Messi’s honor – with Bellingham having stoked additional fire within Messi shortly after kickoff – until the day he retires. His day job, captaining a fabled if flawed club in London, can wait for one more week.

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Former Arsenal boss calls out US pay-to-play modelWenger says academy setups are vital for growthArsène Wenger, Fifa’s head of global football development, has said that while the US faced numerous structural obstacles to becoming a real soccer power, many of those obstacles are being addressed by leadership at the US Soccer Federation and Major League Soccer.Speaking Thursday in a roundtable with US Soccer chief executive JT Batson and chief operating officer Dan Helfrich, Wenger heaped praise on the federation for its new $250m headquarters in Fayetteville, Georgia, saying “I feel it’s important for every footballer, somewhere, to feel you’re at home.”“We push, with the support of our president [Gianni Infantino], a lot to develop football in the States,” Wenger said, “because [of] diversity, what football likes and what makes football strong, because [there’s] a quantity, 350 million people, and I’m sure there is talent. We [at Fifa] are working together to give a chance to everybody to develop the game and to love the game.”However, Wenger cautioned, there is plenty of work to be done on the pitches that surround the complex. The former Arsenal boss said that there was “no alignment on the global policy of technical development” in the United States until very recently, but stressed that, considering the context of this country’s sprawling geography and disparate soccer ecosystem, decisions on how to move forward should be made by the federation, not Fifa.That said, Wenger had some notable criticisms of the US soccer development system – namely the pay-to-play model that can see fees for youth soccer participation rise into the tens of thousands per year for families.“From outside, I felt that people from a poor background had no real access to the game,” Wenger observed, “and that is quite a big part of a population. Usually, the best football players come from poor backgrounds, and so maybe there’s a job to do there as well to make it possible and available for everybody and, after, to be consistent because it’s not a short-term fix.”Wenger compared the current effort, which has seen teams in MLS, the United Soccer League (USL) and other leagues begin free-to-play academy setups for a region’s elite players, to one undertaken by his home country decades ago.“I was part of the opening of the first academies in France and it took 10 years. 1973, the first academy opened in France. 1984, France won the European Championship. You have to be consistent, and one of the things that is the most neglected is an identification of talent. It demands an eye. It demands an education. It demands consistency, to always give a chance to young players, to identify who has talent in five years – not now – and that is not easy to develop in every country.”Before the topic shifted, Batson stressed that it isn’t a thrifty undertaking.“This will take time and it will be hard and you have to commit and really stick to it,” Batson said. “And I think that is our commitment, to do that. But I think ultimately, this does take resources.“It’s not a coincidence that the teams that have gone the furthest in this tournament are some of the best-resourced federations in the world. They are able to ensure that there’s access. They’re able to ensure there’s great opportunity. They’re able to ensure there’s great coaching. And they have great government support. They have great community support. They have great professional club support. And so everyone’s working together with a shared mission to bring this to life. And I think that’s the opportunity we have coming out of the summer.”Helfrich said that the efforts to make youth programs more accessible will require opening a new “system” rather than making the current operation more affordable.“We are not seeking to make the current system more affordable; we’re trying to create a new system that then we make highly affordable,” Helfrich said. “It’s a really important distinction … We need a different system. We need a system that has the pathway open to more players.”

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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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Infantino has said US president will hand over trophySpain v Argentina final is set for Sunday in New JerseyDonald Trump will attend Sunday’s World Cup final between Spain and Argentina, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.“We look forward ⁠to the final match on Sunday, ​and I know ‌the president ‌looks forward to attending,” Leavitt said. “This is a fitting conclusion to a tournament that showcased America’s ability to host the world on the grandest stage.”“Yes, hopefully we’ll present the trophy together in the final,” Infantino said. “That’s always been the plan, and that’s how it’s always been done in the past – the president of the country where the final is held presents the trophy together with the Fifa president.”At the 2022 World Cup final, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, joined Infantino to award the trophy to Lionel Messi and his Argentina teammates. Vladimir Putin awarded it to Kylian Mbappé and France after their win at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.Trump was front and center for the final of last summer’s Club World Cup at the same stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, presenting the trophy to champions Chelsea and drawing loud boos from the crowd.While Trump has not yet attended a game at this World Cup, he has nevertheless played a significant role. He has a close relationship with Infantino, and called the Fifa president to lobby for a review of USA star Folarin Balogun’s controversial red-card suspension before their last-16 match. Fifa did reverse Balogun’s ban, but the political circus cast a pall over the US team, who exited a promising World Cup with a flat loss to Belgium.Trump has made several appearances at sporting events since his reelection. Last year, he attended the Super Bowl, tennis’s US Open, the Daytona 500 and golf’s Ryder Cup. This year, he has attended several golf events, college football’s national championship game and Game 3 of the NBA Finals, where he was met with boos from the New York Knicks home crowd.Leavitt told reporters that she did not know which team Trump was supporting in the final.“I’m sure he’ll have a fun answer ⁠for you,” she told reporters.Leavitt also said Trump will attend a Fifa reception at Trump Tower in New York City on Friday. Soccer’s governing body opened an office in the building last year.

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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.