Thomas Tuchel: How England’s familiar failure saw Three Lions reach World Cup final after replacing Jezri Konsa Football News

Thomas Tuchel was an English gambler. A squad will pick a few others. Wall to wall win against Mexico. Starting Morgan Rogers based on “coach feeling”.

But in the end, a gamble from the Three Lions’ head coach cost them too much to make it to the World Cup final.

The stage was set for history. A first half where Lionel Messi barely left Elliott Anderson’s pocket and England refused to provoke Argentina.

The first draft was being written when Anthony Gordon fired home from a Rodgers cross 10 minutes into the second period – proving the latest evidence of Tuchel’s gut instinct. Football felt like it was actually coming home.

But seven minutes late everything collapsed. In fact, it hung on for a moment some time ago.

It’s easy to criticize Ijri Konser’s identity and England’s 20-plus minutes behind the reigning World Cup champions, but it seemed questionable at the moment when Gordon’s numbers rose.

Tuchel promised things would be different but we’ve all seen that before. England’s natural tendency to hold on to a lead – and the various occasions when they failed to do so – was one of the harshest criticisms of the Gareth Southgate era but it dogged them for a long time.

England have scored first in seven of the 13 knock-out matches they have lost in the last 30 years. The Three Lions are the only team this century to lead a World Cup semi-final without making the final – and they’ve done it twice now.

So there was a disappointing introduction as they saw just 17 per cent of the ball and had nine touches in Argentina’s half in the quarter of an hour after Gordon’s goal, prompting Tuchel to introduce Konsa. The freeze began, though Nico Gonzalez’s header aside and the World Cup holders still hadn’t forced Jordan Pickford into a meaningful save.

Of course, some changes need to be made. But it was here that Tuchel was employed to see through the noise and gauge the mood of what his side needed, making unexpected choices that served him well. England recruited him as a conqueror.

The team he took across the Atlantic is, perhaps, not good enough to win this World Cup. But it should have been good enough against Argentina, who were beaten in Atlanta on Wednesday.

At half-time in the tournament’s opening game, he told his players: “I don’t care if you lose, as long as you lose our way.” But he betrayed that courage of his own convictions because he, like his players, wanted to hold on to what was there rather than inspire England to kill the game.

Not only did the change in shape and personnel add to England’s defensive anxiety, it also robbed them of their most direct outside ball by removing Gordon – their most in-form forward outside of Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane, and their strongest option on the counter-attack.

Kane had apparently still not recovered from running himself into the Azteca field nine days earlier, while Rodgers, now theoretically captaining Bellingham, managed only a solitary touch between the change of shape and Martinez’s winner.

After 21 minutes, the Three Lions held 7.2 percent of possession. They registered eight touches in the opposition’s half and failed to deliver a single cross, with Tuchel’s initial game plan to exploit Argentina’s lack of width completely squeezing his own way.

The head coach’s intention was to use Djed Spence and Reece James as the bombing wing-backs in the 3-4-3 he has supported for most of his career but he knows so long in the tooth that, having already seen so little of the ball, they will likely be forced to revert to a back five that soon unfolds in front of him.

As it happened, James and Spence only touched the ball once in Argentina’s half between them for the rest of the game.

Without more bodies on the pitch, England handed the ball to the greatest player of all time to a team itching to get it. A team that knows how and when to seize the moment. Argentina’s return from that point was certainly predictable, if not inevitable.

“We were very passive after the goal,” Tuchel finally admitted. He criticized England’s Euro 2024 campaign shortly after his appointment last year, saying Southgate and his squad were “more afraid of being left out of the tournament than having the excitement and hunger to win the tournament”. You wonder if this performance in the cold light of day might have similar reflections.

England struggled desperately to keep hold of the ball after Konsa’s arrival following a flurry of Argentine attacks. Even without it, the defender won no possession for his side at all – but lost it five times.

Tuchel understood earlier when his changes were not delivered and had the courage to change things. Against Norway, Bellingham moved back into midfield before reverting to number 10 when it became clear that his influence had been nullified.

But here the head coach appeared as frozen as his players, bringing on Dan Burn and Nico O’Reilly to shore up the defense rather than tear up the script when it was clear the Tide weren’t crying out for some attacking options in his side.

Marcus Rashford and Ivan Toni were given just four minutes to make a difference, and Argentina converted soon after. Neither did Bukayo Saka and Ollie Watkins.

Captain Kane refused to criticize Tuchel’s tactics after the game but made his feelings abundantly clear when speaking BBC Sport. “At this level, holding is not enough,” he said with irritation.

Perhaps Tuchel was encouraged by the way England won with 10 men at the Azteca a week earlier. But that would be naive against a formidable opponent.

After reducing England to 10 men, Mexico made their intentions clear that they would target cross after cross into the box – and it played into the hands of the Three Lions’ back five that night.

A team built on passing football with Messi to strike will never play that way. And he struck, the turn provider for both of Argentina’s goals being so expertly defended for the opening hour.

Tuchel was hired to take things to the next level. Under Southgate, England beat teams they wanted to beat and weren’t deterred when they were underdogs. In that case, nothing has changed.

In time it might be easy to reflect on how that rousing half-time team-talk against Croatia, as well as a number of bold attacking changes and a particularly well-timed defensive intervention at the Azteca, raised hopes that Tuchel’s in-game management would prove the missing piece of the puzzle that Southgate’s was woefully lacking.

This may yet be proven at Euro 2028, later Tuchel has already committed to extending his two-year contract.

But until then a painful irony is that it is precisely one dice too far and a return to defense-first football that Tuchel promised to eradicate will now haunt him and England for the next two years.