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Even Southgate never went into reverse like Tuchel did against Argentina
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: England 1-2 Argentina
All the years that have passed since those red shirts on a summer’s day at a long-gone Wembley Stadium – the humiliations, the occasional triumph, the plentiful servings of self-pity. For a short while in Atlanta it felt like that epoch might finally be ending and all it came down to was managing the last five minutes and whatever the beleaguered referee might add.
A place at a World Cup final was within England’s grasp, a mere 60 years since the last. But just as it loomed into view, already the players and their manager were tracing an old path. The man currently in charge of the England team might be German, the players might be of a generation finessed under bold new coaching ideas, but once more a familiar anxiety took hold. England were minutes from the prize. Yet team and manager were already obeying an old instinct to sabotage the moment.
England had been in retreat long before Lionel Messi served up for Enzo Fernández the goal that would level this World Cup semi-final, and then the second for Lautaro Martínez ,which would propel Argentina forward. Of course, Messi is Messi, and this Argentina team exist to exert his will on games by any means necessary. Yet, as ever, at the moment of reckoning, England demonstrated all the resistance of damp cardboard.
Thomas Tuchel once again reverted to the deep defensive position. Once again, the adapted five-man back line sat on the edge of their area. Against Mexico in the last 16, Tuchel was dismissive of any suggestion he had invited pressure, asking what other option he had with just 10 men. Against Norway in the quarter-finals he did the same, once Erling Haaland was off the pitch. Against Argentina, a team accustomed to playing with it all on the line, such a move was fatal.
Immediately the supporters in the stands in Atlanta, and in the streets and front rooms of England, recognised the mistake. The punditocracy on the BBC saw it, too. Former players Wayne Rooney and Joe Hart have been here before and treated this defeat much like revisiting a trauma. For the rest of us it was hard to miss: like staring into the face of the England team over the decades that have passed since 1966.
Tuchel said that Argentina’s tactical changes as he saw them – two wide wingers, two central strikers – forced his hand. So too, he seemed to suggest, did the attitude of his players. He talked about them failing to be “active” as he called it, engaging their opposition and taking the game to them. But by this point those on the outside could see it more clearly than him.
This kind of retreat, to a greater or lesser degree, was the default position of so many England teams. England led against Brazil in 2002, Croatia in 2018, Italy in 2021. Sir Gareth Southgate, a man more criticised for a reluctance to make substitutions, never went into reverse quite as spectacularly as this. The record is now two World Cup semi-finals, and two European Championship finals in the last five tournaments. But that final step, or the penultimate one at the World Cup, is the primary English problem.
The recriminations from Atlanta will last for years, and as for the precious opportunity – who knows when it will come again?
Tuchel is part of this unfortunate history now, and defeats like this often suck reputations into the void. Afterwards he breezily turned over the page to Euro 2028, before England complete Saturday’s third-place play-off, although one feels that moving on will be more difficult than that.
After Fernández’s 85th-minute equaliser, Messi found the substitute Martínez at the back post for a winner seven minutes later. “There was blood in the water and we went for it,” Lionel Scaloni, the Argentina head coach, said. His team, to their credit, never gave up the chase.
They pursued that equaliser after Anthony Gordon’s 55th-minute goal, a fine finish after England launched a quick attack down the right that ended with Morgan Rogers sweeping the ball to the back post. England had just 12 per cent of the ball from that moment until Martínez’s 92nd-minute goal.
This Argentina team are very hard to love, but you have to admire the tenacity with which they keep going. Around Messi is a fairly mixed bag of young talents and old boys clinging on. Their commitment to the cause, however, is not in doubt. They handle the moments of adversity better than most.
As for England, in the minutes that followed Gordon’s goal, Tuchel and his players seemed to make up their minds that what had sufficed for Norway and Mexico would work for Argentina.
He brought off Gordona after 72 minutes for Ezri Konsa and then Dan Burn and Nico O’Reilly came on for Reece James and Declan Rice. In the meantime, the game was following an inevitable path. There were nine attempts on the England goal, including the two that went in, after Gordon scored. Alexis Mac Allister somehow clipped a post with a header. Jordan Pickford made one of the saves of his life from the substitute Nicolás González. A post was struck again by Mac Allister before the second goal.
In other words: this goal was coming. This Argentina have some fine players, including Messi, Julián Alvarez, Fernández, Emiliano Martínez – but they are so much more than the sum of their parts. The game finished with the 38-year-old Nicolás Otamendi on the pitch. So too the MLS midfielder Rodrigo De Paul, as well as the right-back Gonzalo Montiel, 29, who did not make the grade on loan at Nottingham Forest.
“They were raised in an environment where they feared nothing,” Scaloni said of his players. “They don’t feel the weight on their shoulders.” In those painful last moments, Tuchel tried to reverse his earlier mistake by sending on Ivan Toney and Marcus Rashford, but the momentum had slipped away. England were beaten.
It had been intense from the start with the Argentine cynicism as high as ever. Elliot Anderson was targeted and eventually booked when Djed Spence nudged a charging Messi into the midfielder’s path. Spence was superb for much of the game, including a recovery tackle on Giuliano Simeone after the Gordon goal.
At the critical moment when Messi prepared to cross for the Martínez goal, however, Spence seemed to feel a bolt of pain and could not react in time.
It was a gripping game, even without a single shot on target from either side in the first half. Ismail Elfath, the US referee for whom this game felt impossible at times, was slow to book Argentina players. They seemed to know who to target, in particular Jude Bellingham and Pickford. Bellingham had some fine moments in the first half but he struggled after the break.
England’s goal came 10 minutes after half-time, when the momentum had been with Argentina. Nicolás Tagliafico only just stopped Harry Kane’s long ball forward. From there Rice fed Rogers and the cross was perfect. At the back post, Gordon slipped past his man and guided it home, right-footed, at the back post.
In the aftermath England seemed to retreat. Tuchel said that he did not believe in a curse that afflicts England in the closing stages of such big knockout games. Of course, he was seeing it first hand for the first time – which, for the rest of us, is sadly not the case.
[Source: Daily Telegraph]
