BfB

A week on, and life carries on much as it did.

England took the lead just before the hour through Anthony Gordon and then fell back. As England tried to defend the lead Argentina came forward and allowed Enzo Fernandez to drop back to the deep sitting midfielder role, and moved Lionel Messi from the middle to being withdrawn on the right, allowing Alexis Mac Allister to crash the box.

Thomas Tuchel brought on another central defender to block the gaps, Gordon exited, and the players carried on sitting back. Declan Rice maintained COVID levels of distancing from Messi, still the players sat back, Argentina equalised through Fernandez and still England’s players sat deep.

Two minutes into injury time a still largely unharrassed Messi crossed to Lautaro Martínez who won the game.

Isolate

It feels more comfortable to isolate the failures which England suffer to a localised a source as can be found “Ten Brave Lions and One Stupid Boy”, “The Hand of God”, “Notice Anything About The Guys Who Missed The Penalties”.

This is always wrong, and as that last example suggests, is done for nefarious reasons. In the cane Argentina 2 England 1 that reason is laudable enough, in that we want to throw a protective shield around a group of very good players.

I am not interested in hanging Declan Rice or new £117m Chelsea man Morgan Rogers out to dry, but nor am I interested in allowing the blame to be assigned to a manager just because – well – no one in England ever went poor blaming the Germans.

Withdrawn

Rice and Rogers, when sitting atop a back five, had a job to do of closing down the two withdrawn forwards and that job was made easier by having a fullback behind them to stop that forward going down the touchline, and a defender in case they were beaten, as well as Elliot Anderson to act as a kind of midfield insurance.

What they did was create a second line in front of the defenders which not long did not stop the two wide withdrawn playmakers from creating, but also did not stop spaces from appearing in the England backline as the aforementioned Mac Allister was able to pick a path through a static group of Englishmen.

And you can ask yourself, Dear Reader, if Arsenal had won the league with a Declan Rice who watched the Wolves playmaker pass the ball from ten meters away and, if not, how England expect to do the same with the self-styled Greatest of all Time Lionel Messi being allowed to pick his passes.

Removing

Which is not to suggest that all the problems England had can be put down to those two, or the other, players. England froze, some weight sitting on their shoulders, and the likes of Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane who had superb World Cups would have liked to push forward more if only to allow the Rice/Anderson/Rogers line more space, suggesting they fill it.

Tuchel though animated his own defeat. By removing the ability for England to counter-attack through Gordon, the problem with a static group of players was exacerbated, and while Tuchel would have probably wanted Jude Bellingham to break with the ball the full length of the field as he would in the final moment of the third placed play off, his approach compounded the problems the players had.

England sat deep looking to counter, but England were too deep, and unable to counter, and so just allowed Argentina both the space to play and the opportunity to play without the fear of conceding. Problem on problem on problem.

Accusation

The accusation levelled at Thomas Tuchel is that being an Elite Manager he could avoid this. The Elite Manager has been a waxing and waning figure in this World Cup and Tuchel’s part in that is to have made impressive changes in some games, and difficult ones in others, but with the final contested by Lionel Scaloni and Luis de la Fuentes the jobbing FA man comes out as preeminent.

The Elite Manager seems revealed to be something of a tinkerer. A series of changes to players or approach are made in the game, and sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t and the net result we tie in a bow. This is not entirely accurate, and managers make a difference, but football has fallen in love with Elite Managers.

For England, I prefer the stability of Sir Gareth Southgate where the team is trusted to perform rather than fuelled by frictious antagonism between players and coach.

Wider

Under the problems with England’s tactics, or England’s players was a wider issue which became obvious at the quarter-final stage of the World Cup and largely ruined the last eight games. The forty-eight team World Cup added another round of games, and it added another layer of teams who were not as good as one would get at a 32 team World Cup, so the quality of match ups in group games went down for everyone.

This resulted in most group games for the higher seeded teams being largely attritional affairs. England, to take an example, played grinding games against Panama and Ghana which while the Africans might have had a penalty and the Panamanians had their moments, ended up giving the higher seeds two sapping encounters.

Spread this across all twelve groups and by the time the last eight came, and teams were playing a sixth game in a month after a long club season, and players were physically not able to bring the level of football one might want from the last eight of the greatest show on Earth.

Meek

This is reflected in France’s meek surrender to Spain in the other Semi Final, the Spanish keeping the ball while the French ran around after it without the energy to mount an effective press. It was reflected in the quarter-finals where Morocco and Belgium seemed happy to exit with a smile, and Norway and Switzerland ended up being ground down in extra time.

Most of the last seven competitive games in the World Cup saw the first team that scored won, and while Argentina vs England did not go that way, nor did England vs Norway, both those games were characterised by the leading team not being able to mount a defence of their lead. The legs will not carry, the distances are too great, the falling back too deep.

FIFA get the best players in the World for a month and a bit every four years and in 2026 they chose to spend that resource on more games where a top ten seed played a forty to sixty seed. England had a fun encounter with DR Congo, Paraguay were devilish against France, but the result of that was that when the best teams were put together, they were not able to play the best football, so FIFA got more, worse games.

Complicated

So it was with England on the hour. When given the physical test of retaining a lead England were asked to go one step beyond what they could muster. The Elite Manager made changes, and sometimes they work, and sometimes they do not and this was one time when they did not.

Argentina get the spoils of victory, but fritter them away in a tedious display in the final where they lose to Spain and England go into the kind of need for change which how lowered the nation to seven prime ministers in the length of time where we used to have one. Expect Tuchel to have the knife plunged into his back at some point in the autumn.

And expect to hear that it was his failure, rather than anything more complicated, which cost England the 2026 World Cup.