World Cup 2026

[andy]

England reverted to full Southgate then, I see. Four centre backs for the last 15 mins plus stoppage time to defend a 1 goal lead. Remind me what that definition of madness is, again?

Mrs DF had the match on in the background and she said to me when I came down to check the score 'I know nothing about football, but I don't understand why they just let them have all those shots at the end, it was obvious that one would go in'

so there you have it.... it takes someone who knows nothing about football a few minutes to understand what people with years and years of experience stubbornly refuse to grasp

I'm pleased I didn't watch it, I'm pleased I don't have to and I can reassure myself that it was in no way my fault

They did that in last couple games and it worked but he blinked too early last night we needed a second goal Argentina were constantly knocking on the door and he reverted way too early unfortunately

[sussexpob]

I have mixed feeling about blaming Tuchel for the second half. I think we were too negative in many ways, but look at the statistics.... In the 20 minutes before Argentina scored, England completed 2 passes, which for context was Stones backpassing to Pickford, and Pickford passing back to Stones. 2 completed passes in 20 minutes. In the same spell, Pickford hit 6 goal kicks, 5 of which went directly out of play without being touched. England launched several long balls, all straight back to Argentina.

You can play 0-0-10 or 10-0-0 or whatever formation you dream up from your mind, but if you cannot pass a ball or keep it, then you lose. Its as simple as that. Its a simple collapse of basic technical quality.

Blaming Tuchel for a complete absence of technical quality from our players is a convenient excuse. The players completely lost their heads as the game went on

[sussexpob]

Enzo's goal is another example of just bad execution. Argentina took the short corner, and Anderson marking Messi outside the box for that ball was the only player to react to the short corner. Argentina had three men lined up on the outside of the box, and none of the England players in the box pushed out to cover. When Messi hit the pass to Enzo, the nearest player to him was 15 metres away!!!!!

Bellingham was the only person to react to the ball, but was too far away to close it down (not being his man, and not being in his zone). I think it was John Stones covering that part of the box..... he stood rooted to the spot and did nothing to push out. We had 11 men behind the ball, and no one picking up 3 players in acres of space. That isn't management or tactics, its just sh*t defending. Everyone got sucked in to the belief that Messi was going to slot a diagonal in, and they fell asleep.

Sorry, but this is sunday league level stuff. You don't leave players dead centre of the goal and 18-20 yards out completely unmarked.

[Durhamfootman]

I haven't seen the game, but everyone seems to be blaming Tuchel for making a huge tactical error. Comparisons are being made with Southgate with a general acceptance that SG was tactically naive (I would have said incompetent) for which Tuchel was supposed to be the big tactical upgrade. I'm not fully convinced that the players don't also think it was their fault, with some justification. Maybe the discussions in the camp have been about how the players could have done things better, I don't know, but at some point the players are going to read all this stuff about Tuchel and maybe think that it wasn't their fault after all. Human nature! Add in Tuchel publicly criticising the players skill and performance levels during the post match QF celebrations and then making a mess of the SF himself.......... I'm speculating.

My question is, how does this affect the relationship between players and coach? Do they lose trust in his decision making, so when he asks them to do things during a game in response to set backs or for game management, will they have doubts instead of faith in him? Is this what losing the dressing room looks like?

He has a contract to 2028. Is that realistic at this point in time? If he still had the 18 month contract that he requested, is there any doubt that both parties would have moved on, amicably, of course, but happy to part. I'm not sure the FA would sack him, having just extended his contract, but it wouldn't surprise me if Tuchel decided he fancied a return to club football. Not straight away, of course, but if criticism continued

[alfie]

Even 24 hours and more later this one hurts...

Can't say I am exactly surprised that Argentina was the one they couldn't get past : they have never lost a WC semi final after all ! But really did think that this was a realistic opportunity to at least reach the final. And it looked that way to me until England took the lead... But then of course Argentina , of necessity , upped their offensive efforts : and for whatever reason , England seemed to retreat into their shell.

Was it fatigue after those two preceding very draining games ? Or the pressure of being so close to a long desired breakthrough ? Just lack of technical quality or the wrong signal from the management ? Might be a bit of everything.

The players obviously have to take some of the blame ; but I do think Tuchel - who had done really well earlier in the competition - has to shoulder most of the responsibility , if not just for the defeat but for the meek manner of it which is perhaps even more galling than the loss. As soon as he replaced Gordon with another defender instead of fresh attacking legs it was obvious he had decided to replay the Mexico rearguard operation. But that was (a) justified because of the red card; and (b) against Mexico not Argentina. This one - with a likely half hour still to play - was an exercise in either optimism or desperation. And it got worse with more defenders coming on and his last two - belatedly attacking options - delayed until far too late. I don't see how anyone could defend those tactics.

Of course , as Tuchel pointed out , quite correctly , in his interview ; no one can say for sure what would have happened had he made different choices. But we can certainly see what actually did happen : and I don't think you can (as the manager seemingly attempted to do) just pass that off as the fault of the players. Going full on defence only served to embolden an already determined Argentina attack which no longer had to fret about the danger of an England counter attack ; and inevitably led to the eventual result.

I am not calling for him to be sacked (though I suspect if it had been Southgate overseeing that last forty minutes the howls for blood would be echoing around not just this site but all over the internet !) ; but , like DFM , I do wonder how this debacle will affect future manager/player relations. We have already seen friction with Bellingham , who is surely the central figure going forward for England , even as Kane enters his later few years. Could be some tricky times ahead. I guess we will find out between here and the next Euros : but I am rather less confident than a day or so ago...

[sussexpob]

I don't see how anyone could defend those tactics

Given the situation at hand, what are we actually criticising? I see a lot of takes that he took the attacking threat off and that was akin to submission, but did England fans black out in the 20 minutes between the goal and the first substitution, because we tried to continue to be positive and kept attacking options on, but we quite literally could not string a pass together. The stats are utterly damning on this front, aside from a minority of long balls and 1-2 s between CB and goalie, we didn't complete any other passes and could not get a foot on the ball. And those long balls that did find a way through led to instantly lost balls or players dribbling and being tackled by the first man. How many teams at this WC have played low blocks or gone full out defence? Lost count. How many teams in recent WC memory have gone through a 20 minute period with no forward short pass completed, or single figure possession? Only Qatar in a game they had two players sent off and were already 6-0 down.

I don't care what tactics you play, nothing in the history of modern football says that if you put 11 men behind the ball, you can no longer complete a simple pass. You can play whatever tactics you want, if you cannot keep the ball you will lose. Tuchel hadn't changed anything at the point England became unable to do anything. Gordon was on the pitch, and Pickford hit 12 long balls to him in the second half, 80 percent of them went out for a throw in or missed him by such a distance Argentina recovered the ball unchallenged.

Put a Lionel Messi on each side for England, if the ball sails over his head into the stand then it makes no difference.

[sussexpob]

Put yourself in Tuchel's shoes here. Your team has completely frozen and lost its ability to make simple passes, and is just blasting the ball up the field and losing it. Tuchel basically made a decision to say, well if we can't play out or keep the ball and are just stuck in our box, then I'd rather have a defender marking someone deep than Marcus Rashford. The only other conclusion would have been to just hope that a team clearly fading under the pressure would snap out of it, but he'd have been similarly criticised for not reacting to play if he had done that and it had failed, and it would have.... because no team can survive such technical failings.

12 percent possession over nearly a half (considering the huge amount of overtime played) worth of time is a statistic you just don't see in professional football like ever, even in lopsided battles. It's a statistical outlier that is so unheard of and pathetic, you cannot blame anyone but the players, this is record breaking levels of being unable to pass or keep a ball.

No tactician can overcome his team giving nearly all the ball to a world class side led by the greatest attacking player ever to play.

[sussexpob]

I don't think the English press are particularly honest either, because they already built up their heros and villians over the tournament. Elliot Anderson is the next best thing, the new face of English football, so no one will go for him and blame him.... The fact a 120 million quid midfielder went about half an hour without completing a single pass, we will ignore. Its the managers fault the 4th most expensive player ever can not do schoolboy stuff anymore.

Look at the first goal, who is marking the central zone covering the edge of the box... Anderson. Who then gets sucked to the ball despite Spence having this option covered, leaving 15 m between the goalscorer and the nearest centre back.... Anderson. The goal comes from a single players indiscipline being sucked into ball hunting. If he holds his zone as he is supposed to, he would have have been in the position to block the shot, but he drifts from his post and ends up leaving a chance wide open.

Not the managers fault....

Second goal, Pickford adopts a position outside of his near post rather than being central/slight bias to near side. The ball ends up going over his head.... if he'd been positioned correctly, he'd of had a chance to attack the aerial ball and punch it away, or at least have got into a position to block the eventual path of the header and potentially save it. Bad positioning to start, keeper totally taken out the equation for a ball bouncing 3 yards from goal fairly centrally.

Not the managers fault...

Pickford for the record ended with an Expected goals against of -3.4, the worst performing goalkeeper with more than 1 start in the tournament.... or to put it another way, cost England a goal every other game .

[alfie]

Unsurprising to see Sussex on to play Devil's advocate . Not that I think Tuchel is The Devil , by the way - just a bit of a disappointment on this occasion. But I'm not buying all that.

Look I absolutely agree the players must accept criticism for their failings. Contrary to what most on here were thinking before this game , Argentina turned out to be the better side over 90+ minutes and deserved to win. But that is simply not the point.

Up until the Gordon goal , England were mixing it with them , hadn't conceded , and by taking the lead left Argentina with work to do. And yes , for whatever reason (fatigue ? Nervousness ?) , they seemed to go into their shell to a large extent after scoring - though in the 12 minutes or so to the drink break they still hadn't had their defence breached. So at that break Tuchel had a choice to make : supply fresh legs and instruct the players to go after another score (remember at this stage Argentina had two centre backs on yellow cards) : or do what he did ... pull up the drawbridge in the hopes of somehow repelling an opponent who had shown amazing ability to score late goals throughout the tournament and were blessed with one of the all time greats - for a further 30 minutes . Good luck with that.

Against Croatia , the second half was all "go for it , take the risk" ... and they were hailed for it. Granted only a group game , less jeopardy. But add in Tuchel's own comments before this WC , that English teams in the past seemed to play more in fear of losing than with belief they could win these crucial matches ; and I think we had a right to expect that he would look to order the more positive approach. Instead , he chose the "put 'em all in front of the box and pray" option. And it simply didn't work , did it ? Sure , trying to attack might well have resulted in a similar scoreline : but I reckon most England fans would have been less unhappy had they gone down giving it a red hot go than by watching what almost amounted to surrender in the face of superior opposition. I certainly would.

Was it really so impossible to imagine that , say , bringing on Mainoo for Rice and retaining attacking wide options might have secured a result ? Obviously he thought not - which is fair enough ; but an indication of an apparently low level of confidence in the players he had selected for this squad. Rather depressing going forward ! He also seemed to imply in the interview that he made the choices he did because he essentially didn't believe he had the players on the pitch - or presumably on the bench either - to match Argentina by actually playing football. Seems to me a bit of a cop out to just say "nothing I could do about it". Don't we pay good money for a tactically expert manager to get the best out of those players ? How are the players to take those comments as they look to play on ? To be fair he did say he takes responsibility - but it didn't really sound very sincere : more like "not the manager's fault".

As I say , I am not screaming for him to be sacked (though I probably wouldn't weep if he decided to step away). But if we find ourselves in a similar situation in 2 years at the Euros I wonder whether he would make the same choice against a top ranked opponent ?

[Durhamfootman]

making no comment about the actual play which I haven't seen, I rather agree with that assessment

we might get a bit of Euro '28 insight tonight

but without the jeopardy of course

[Gingerfinch]

Anyone watching tonight's game? I will if I'm awake, not that I care for it much.

Spain favourites tomorrow but Argentina will scrap all the way. I'm going 1-0 Spain!

[Durhamfootman]

not me, but then I haven't watched England live at any point.... I just haven't trusted them enough to not leave me cross/angry/frustrated/irritated/fraught/any of the other negative emotions in the human spectrum for 90% of each match. There's no joy in it at all. At least when I know the score I can be moderately sanguine about it

[Durhamfootman]

as for tomorrow, I simply couldn't care less and I have no desire to watch the Orange Don lauding it about, nor the obsequious Infantile fawning all over him

[Gingerfinch]

Entertaining start

[Durhamfootman]

now.... can we defend this for nearly 2 hours with around 12% possession?

Southgate will think we can