ATLANTA — At the final whistle, they were strewn across the pitch in various poses of shock and grief. England had fallen in a game it didn’t have to lose, a game it was minutes away from winning, a game that would have sent the Three Lions to their first World Cup final in 60 years.
As the magnitude of the defeat settled in, Jude Bellingham stood near the middle of the stadium almost frozen, hands on hips while his various teammates fell on their back, crouched to their knees or simply sat down with legs spread. All of them were forced to watch Argentina celebrate another win that felt like destiny.
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But for England, the 2-1 decision that sends Argentina and Lionel Messi to another World Cup final wasn’t destiny at all. It was strategy.
And Thomas Tuchel, the England coach who has spent the entire World Cup talking about brave football and the last week playing mind games with his star player, must bear the blame.
It’s not coming home. Instead, when it mattered most, Tuchel’s tactics came home to roost.
“I believe that’s the nature of the game,” Tuchel said. “As soon as you lose, you get criticized. It’s just what it is. No one knows what would have happened if we made different decisions so it makes no sense to engage in that and lose my head.”
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Maybe the weight of the moment was too much for the 52-year-old German, who was hired to run the English national team because of his reputation for in-game mastery and willingness to hold players accountable. Maybe he sensed his team was tiring and wanted them to conserve energy as they tried to preserve a 1-0 lead. Maybe, in respecting Argentina’s comeback ability too much, he did his own team a disservice.
Whatever the reason, Tuchel decided to “park the bus” for the final 20 minutes of the game, dropping extra defenders deep in front of the goal and pretty much surrendering any hope of scoring again or even possessing the ball.
England manager Thomas Tuchel gives instructions to Jude Bellingham.
(REUTERS / REUTERS)
Tuchel tried to win the game 1-0. He got the outcome his strategy deserved.
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“Argentina played with more risk, with more rhythm, with a feeling that maybe they have nothing to lose anymore,” Tuchel said. “Suddenly we played with a feeling we have a lot to lose so we dropped into a deep block which isn’t a problem but we struggled to stay active in that deep block and defend crosses and struggled to get physical on the runners into the box. … It was difficult for us. Couldn’t get the momentum back at all and they took advantage of it and won the game.”
It was a curious choice for a coach who said before the quarterfinal that, at this stage of the tournament, his team needed to “be on the front foot and be brave.” They have to go for it, Tuchel said, because otherwise there would be regrets.
Did he forget his own words? Did he panic? Did he finally lose his touch with a team where friction had been building over the past several days? Or was it simply just one of those things that happens in sports where a team or an athlete gets close to a monumental victory and, for whatever reason, just can’t perform the way it must to get over the finish line.
“The responsibility is on the coach, and if it doesn’t go well, it’s easy to say that it was wrong,” Tuchel said.
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England had every right to be out of gas Wednesday. The knockout-round journey had taken them from Atlanta two weeks ago to Mexico City, where England had to survive the altitude and aura of the Azteca. Then came an emotional, razor-thin quarterfinal against Norway in Miami’s unrelenting heat, the reward for which was a date with Messi in front of a crowd tilted heavily toward Argentina.
But that reality only underlines the problem with how England approached the final 20 minutes. A tired team running ragged near its own goal with Argentina having free reign to possess the ball on the perimeter and Messi lurking, waiting, hunting for opportunity? A recipe for disaster.
“We deserved to be ahead and then for one reason or another we struggled to keep the ball, struggled to put pressure on the ball and it just allowed them to create more momentum and more attacks for them in our final third,” England striker Harry Kane said. “It’s a normal mindset to try to hang on to a one-goal lead, but 20 minutes plus stoppage time to go is always going to be a long time.”
Interminably long. Eons long. Too long.
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With every minute, the pressure seemed to build on the team holding the 1-0 lead. Crossing passes whizzed by the front of the goal. Shots came from all angles, a few barely missing and one hitting the post before bouncing away.
England was winning, but it felt all too familiar for a national team that seems to arrive at the same destination every time.
Since 1996, England has blown a one-goal lead in the knockout round of the World Cup or the European Championships eight times. That inability to close the game is part of what drew England to Tuchel, a mercurial figure in European football who tends to win everywhere he goes but never goes anywhere for very long. He’s soccer’s version of Larry Brown, burning hot and wearing out his welcome quickly while leaving a trail of fractured relationships in his wake.
We saw that begin to manifest after the quarterfinal against Norway, when Tuchel lit into his team and said it was “lucky” to win after a sloppy effort. Like former Alabama coach Nick Saban, who was known to be most critical of his team after big wins, Tuchel was trying to motivate and guard against complacency.
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But when Bellingham pushed back — “Maybe he doesn’t know what it’s like to play in those conditions,” he said — it created an unnecessary narrative heading into the most important game of their national team careers.
Is that why England lost? No, of course not. For most of the game, England played well enough to win and got in position to slam the door.
But it was Tuchel being too cute by half, which is exactly how he botched the semifinals. After taking the 1-0 lead, England needed to keep its foot on the gas. Instead, it went into a strategic turtle in hopes of preventing the very thing that cost it the game.
“The players have a responsibility,” centerback Dan Burn said. “The difference for me is I feel Argentina have been there, done that, have the confidence they were going to do it. I genuinely thought we were going to do it the whole time, but when you get to this level of football it’s very fine margins. It’s an easy thing to say but it is.”
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Tuchel wasn’t in the mood to talk about what-ifs. He saw a team that took a 1-0 lead, immediately started struggling and made the changes he thought would carry it to the finish line.
It didn’t work. And as a result, his tenure will live in infamy.
