It’s all short passing, calm possession, finding the right movement through patience and rhythm. It’s juego de posición. It’s exactly what we expect. It’s Spain. It’s the country’s footballing identity stretching back many generations. It’s who they are. It’s what they’ve always done.

Except that’s a complete lie. It’s Dutch total football filtered through a Catalan perspective with some Argentine ideas mixed in. Spain didn’t invent it at all, but they institutionalised it. That’s something they do better than anyone else.

Every empire needs a moral justification. It’s a lot harder to sleep at night if you admit you just invaded that place and oppressed those people for wealth and power. The British Empire told itself it was simply doing its duty to maintain order. “Of course it would be great for India to belong to the Indians, but they just aren’t yet civilised enough for it, so sadly it is our burden to rule over them and steal all their best stuff”. You have to tell yourself you’re getting into heaven somehow.

The Spanish did it slightly differently. The moral justification was about bringing people into the Catholic Church. They sometimes called it “La Monarquía Católica”, the Catholic Monarchy. That underpinned their whole propaganda: they were building civilisations in their image. New cities would be built. Spanish-speaking cultures would be established. Souls would apparently be saved.

After successfully conquering much of modern-day Mexico and Central America, and then what we now call Peru, the Spanish set their sights further down. There was, they believed, a mythical “Mountain of Silver” south of the already colonised Americas. This could offer vast riches, and yeah, of course, they could tell a bunch of natives that Jesus died for their sins, that’s definitely the important bit. The region would be known as the “Río de la Plata”, roughly meaning “river of silver”. The reality of all that silver didn’t quite live up to the hype, but the name stuck.

The area was initially part of the Viceroyalty of Peru (an absolutely huge area at one point covering most of South America), before eventually getting reorganised into its own Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. As Spain saw it, this was not an “empire” but a “monarchy”. Officially speaking, all of these viceroyalties separately belonged to one monarch, rather than being ruled by a “Spanish government” as such. Though in practical terms, major decisions were made by the Crown through institutions centred in Madrid, with the viceroys appointed to rule these places overwhelmingly coming from Europe, wealth flowing towards Spain, and indigenous people suffering in all the ways that colonised people tend to suffer.

Buenos Aires became the capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a large region with parts covering modern Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. When Napoleon invaded Spain and the ruling monarchy was in crisis, Buenos Aires elites moved to get rid of the viceroy and govern themselves. Some civil war stuff happens, you know the sort, blah blah blah, then some of the provinces formerly part of the Río de la Plata declare independence and become the country that would go on to be called Argentina.

The Spanish crown might have lost land to this new country called Argentina, and they certainly weren’t happy about it. But from a certain point of view, the important bit had been done. The state had been created in their image. The people there spoke Spanish, adopted many of Spain’s values and, crucially, followed the Catholic faith. “Hispanidad”, the later-applied term for a shared Spanish language, culture and values, had been successfully institutionalised.

Jump forward about 200 years, and the same thing happened again, but at the same time sort of in the reverse direction. Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona were playing the undisputed best football in Europe. With one very notable exception we’ll talk about soon, this was built with a core of Spain-eligible players: Carles Puyol, Gerard Piqué, Sergio Busquets, Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta and Pedro. Spain’s new manager, Vicente del Bosque, was nothing like Guardiola. His previous teams were not easy on the eye. But he’d be a fool not to adopt the same style with these players.

Guardiola’s most famous influence was obviously Johan Cruyff. He spent the majority of his playing career at Barcelona under Dutch managers Cruyff and Louis van Gaal, with the club absolutely steeped in Ajax ideas about how to play football. But Guardiola’s Barcelona didn’t play a simple copy of totaalvoetbal. It became its own thing. For one, it had plenty of Argentine influence, with La Liga having long borrowed that country’s best players and thus ideas.

This was already part of Spain’s football identity before Guardiola, and arguably owes more to Real Madrid. Alfredo Di Stéfano changed the game when he arrived in the Spanish capital in 1953. While Spanish football had been more stiff and rigid up to this point, Di Stéfano could transcend position. He’d appear as a striker at one point, then drop deep to create at another. In doing so, he helped change the way Spain thought about the sport. Argentina almost became the ideas engine of Spanish football. Barcelona added that to the Dutch methods, showcasing a distinctly Catalan identity, and then Spain copied the whole thing.

Del Bosque wasn’t about to excite us all. He was always a cautious coach who believed in squad harmony over tactical philosophies. That meant putting Xabi Alonso next to Busquets in midfield and having the team play a much more patient passing game. His Spain were often pretty dull to watch. But the players were of such high quality, and the tactical understanding between them so instinctive in this style of play, that it worked incredibly well. As soon as they won that World Cup, everyone knew “Spanish football” had been reborn.

It was more conservative than Barcelona, more possession-based, and more tiki-taka. It had less room for explosively talented individuals. This has kind of become the Spanish philosophy, with so much priority placed on the collective passing game over players doing their own thing. Maybe that’s hitting something genuine in Spain’s cultural identity. Or maybe it’s just because they were trying to copy Barcelona without having Lionel Messi.

Argentina’s football has never shied away from brilliant individuals. They highly value the enganche, the classic number ten, as the figure who ties the whole team together. It became a core part of Argentine football throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, then transcended the sport itself when Diego Maradona played the role. Argentina’s manager at the 1986 World Cup, Carlos Bilardo, was not a footballing romantic. While his predecessor (also a World Cup winner) César Luis Menotti wanted to play brilliantly entertaining football, Bilardo was all about structure and discipline. Except for the number ten. Everyone stayed solid, then Maradona did his thing to win the game.

This tension between the Menotti and Bilardo visions has shaped Argentine football. But everyone can unite behind a brilliant enganche. Had he stayed in Argentina, Messi would’ve almost certainly developed in exactly this mould. He has all the skills of an enganche that he clearly learned as a kid in Rosario before moving to Barcelona and being shaped by the Dutch-influenced structure around him.

Messi understood the structural requirements of Guardiola’s team perfectly, but he was allowed to be the exception. Spanish doesn’t really embrace the same concept of an enganche, but it certainly understood a brilliant Argentine attacker who could interchange positions and do everything. Those dribbling skills, that change of pace, were very distinctly Argentine qualities that Spain loved, but couldn’t produce themselves in quite the same way. So the national team became more systematised, more coordinated, more passing and less dribbling. It was shaped by the absence of Messi.

Argentina, meanwhile, were trying to figure out how on earth they were supposed to use this guy who was very obviously their best talent since Maradona. Part of what makes Messi so great is that he combines the post-Cruyffian Barça ideas with the classic Argentine style. Various Argentina managers tried to figure out how to make that work outside of Barcelona. Do they go more European? Do they play him in “his Barcelona position”?

The answer, basically, was to treat him like the classic enganche he always would’ve been. He knows how to play the role better than anyone. Despite all those years abroad, he is still Argentine. As this tournament has gone on, we’ve seen Argentina recreate the classic Bilardo formula: everyone stays solid and makes the game absolutely dogshit, while the iconic number ten has the freedom to provide the quality. Which is, despite all the historical connections, the exact opposite of what Spain did here.

Ok, let’s talk about the actual football match. But I’ll be honest with you: there’s a reason I spent so long going on about history rather than the state of what we saw on the pitch here.

Look at that Argentina line on the xG race chart. They did not take a single shot until the 117th minute. Jorge Valdano, the brilliant former Argentine player who crossed the Atlantic and became one of Spanish football’s favourite tactical thinkers, once called José Mourinho and Rafa Benítez’ battles in the 2000s “shit on a stick”. Lord knows what he’d say about this first half, which truly felt soul-destroying. Spain had all of the ball in Argentina’s half, but Argentina were compact enough that the Spanish couldn’t do anything with it. It was the worst possible version of this match-up: Spain can’t always stretch a low block, and Argentina have no interest in anything other than making it unwatchable. Of the 22 players who started this game, only one (Julián Alvarez) had fewer first-half touches than Messi. If that isn’t a lack of ambition, I don’t know what is.

Options did start opening up as Argentina started to tire and leave some gaps. Luis de la Fuente’s subs were really good here. Pedri brought more imagination and spark, while Ferran Torres is the kind of striker who can stretch the play by running in behind, offering those good passers a through-ball option. Nico Williams, as I’ve said before, offers so much variety as a direct dribbling winger, and it’s a shame he hasn’t been fit enough to start games. Mikel Merino, meanwhile, let’s them chuck it in the box. The subs really had a quality of “yes, we have our one true way of playing, but here are some other toys”.

Argentina were really defending in their own box in the second half. They had mostly nullified the threat in the first half, but as the game went on, it really became a matter of everyone putting their bodies on the line. Spain were doing to them what they did to England. Then Enzo Fernández decided to get a stupid second yellow at the end of normal time. Great job, there. You know how it goes. You know your country suddenly comes to life in crucial moments. So you decide to make it basically impossible for Argentina to dominate the game in extra time.

It takes 105 minutes for the breakthrough. Pedro Porro overhits a cross that ends up all the way at the back post, which Williams does well to keep in play, only to pick out Torres making a driving run into the box to smash it in the back of the net. Everyone in the world knew that Spain deserved it on the day.

Torres was ten years old when Spain last won the World Cup. Williams was eight. Porro was ten. This is the generation who grew up watching that great team. This is the first generation to grow up in an era when Spain institutionalised tiki-taka. They’re the generation who make it look like it’s an ancient creed passed down for centuries. They’re the civilisation built in one image, all in service of that vision of how to play football. La Monarquía Tiki-Taka.

Argentina, as everyone could’ve predicted, suddenly started trying to play football once they conceded. Maybe do that at 0-0 when you have eleven players. Messi started having an impact, and Giuliano Simeone was a live wire even if he looks unnervingly like his dad. But it wasn’t enough. We all knew it wouldn’t be enough because Spain are a machine. They conceded one goal this entire tournament. One!

Argentina spent the last 20 years trying to make room for Messi as best they could. Spain tried to figure out a way of playing without Messi, and accidentally stumbled onto a footballing philosophy that became institutionalised as the Spanish way. That’s what Spain do. They take organise the whole culture around the ideas they like. Thankfully, this time it just leads to footballing success instead of brutal colonialism.

Argentina’s football culture is about submitting to the number ten figure. Spain’s culture is now about everyone submitting to the collective aims of the team. The side that lacked Messi beat the side that only had Messi.

Thank you to everyone who has read these newsletters during the World Cup. I’ve really enjoyed writing these, but I’m absolutely exhausted now, so I’m taking a long-scheduled week off. I’ll be back after that to talk about whatever footballing nonsense is on my mind. It’s somehow only a month until the Premier League starts again. I really need to sleep.

Argentina advance to the final in the bid for a historic fourth star that would put them only one behind Brazil and cement Lionel Messi’s place as the undisputed greatest of all time. England, meanwhile, fail in the quest to win their first ever World Cup.

Ok, let me explain. It might take a while, though. Yes, this is a long one.

Yes, a country called England did win the World Cup in 1966. We have photo evidence from the tournament.

Wait, hold on a second. What’s that? That’s not the St. George’s Cross. That’s not the flag of England at all.

That’s the flag of the United Kingdom.

I wrote a whole thing previously about how “England” conceptually makes no sense, but until relatively recently, almost no one in the country itself seemed to notice. “England” did not need to have its own distinct identity because it was the centre of the most powerful empire on Earth. You didn’t have to think of Britain and England as separate concepts unless you lived somewhere that was part of the former but not the latter. For the English, the terms could be used interchangeably.

But nothing lasts forever. England Britain won the World Cup in 1966, but everyone understood it as a country in decline. The twentieth century was not the British century. The empire was shrinking day by day. The country told itself a great story of a small island standing strong in the Second World War, but this became a sort of projection to mask its shrinking influence. Geoff Hurst’s hat trick sort of came to sit alongside Winston Churchill’s speeches as a symbol of national victory when the real story was increasingly one of defeat.

By the 1970s and early 1980s, the empire’s continued decline sat alongside economic problems at home. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had won the general election specifically by exploiting these issues. “I do not intend to be the first woman Prime Minister of a mediocre and declining Britain”, she claimed. But it wasn’t going well in her first term. Then she got what must have felt like a gift from the heavens: Argentina’s military junta invaded the Falkland Islands.

Britain won the subsequent war pretty easily, and Thatcher wasn’t going to be shy about it a year before a general election. “We fought to show that aggression does not pay and that the robber cannot be allowed to get away with his swag”, she said. “There were those who would not admit it… people who would have strenuously denied the suggestion but—in their heart of hearts—they too had their secret fears that it was true: that Britain was no longer the nation that had built an Empire and ruled a quarter of the world.

“Well they were wrong. The lesson of the Falklands is that Britain has not changed and that this nation still has those sterling qualities which shine through our history.”

They weren’t wrong. It was obviously a country in decline in a lot of facets, including international football. After winning the 1966 World Cup on home soil, Britain England lost in the quarter finals in 1970, then failed to qualify for the ‘74 and ‘78 tournaments. They returned in 1982 and got knocked out in the second group stage without doing anything particularly embarrassing. But this was an astounding underperformance considering the talent available. English clubs won seven out of eight European Cup finals between 1977 and 1984.

That club dominance ended pretty dramatically after the Heysel stadium disaster in 1985. English clubs were banned from European competition for five years, with Liverpool getting an additional year. The “brand” of English football at the time was hooliganism, both domestically and abroad. The Sunday Times in 1985 called football “a slum sport played in slum stadiums and increasingly watched by slum people, who deter decent folk from turning up”. Football did not belong to the Britain that Thatcher wanted to reshape the nation into.

But nonetheless, England Britain playing Argentina at the 1986 World Cup had importance. Argentina had changed in the four years since the war. The military junta had given way to democratic rule. But this was still the country Britain had so effectively used as a punching bag four years earlier. This was the country that allowed Britain to very easily say “we’re still here, and we’re still serious players in the world”.

Not this time.

The defeat stung for three reasons. The first was that, well, the country had just prided itself on being vastly superior to Argentina as a nation. This was obviously not the case here. Diego Maradona was so far ahead of anything they could conceive of producing themselves. The second reason was, obviously, the manner of the first goal. Britain explicitly framed the Falklands war as Argentina “stealing” and “breaking the rules” of the natural order of things. Britain loves to pride itself on its “sense of fair play”. British moral logic looks at Maradona and thinks, “You’re good enough to beat us fairly, so why do you need to cheat?”

The implied Argentine response, at least from my (English, but sitting here in 2026) perspective, is: “these are your rules. We don’t have to play by them”. People had been kicking a ball around for millennia, but Britain decided, “these are the official rules the world must adopt”. British objections to Argentina’s approach felt more like an insistence that everyone must follow their own “international rules-based order”.

The third and most important reason was that the rest of the world sided with Argentina this time. Everyone understood it as a struggling and beaten-down country striking a blow against its rich and powerful enemy. This feeling went way beyond the Falklands. Most people in Scotland supported the British position on the islands, with some Scots even serving in the military victory, but you can be certain that viewers north of the border found it absolutely hilarious watching England lose like that. The other “home nations” were not, as some liked to imagine them, England’s little brothers. They were their own countries with their own interests.

Britain won the military war, but Argentina won the culture war. No image from the conflict in the Falklands was remotely as resonant as the Hand of God or the Goal of the Century. The game offered the cleanest possible metaphor for Britain England’s new place in the world. It was over. The presumed reality of a British ruling class over the globe was shattered by Maradona’s fist. It couldn’t hold. That country was ending with the empire. Something new would have to be born.

A new cultural idea around the national team started to take hold four years later. England were not particularly good at the 1990 World Cup. They won the group with five points and two goals in three games. They beat Belgium 1-0 after extra time in the Round of 16, then incredible arrogance and hubris saw them expect to run rampant against Cameroon, only to scrape by with a 3-2 win. And yet the tournament took on a kind of national romance. England lost on penalties to a better Germany team, but the national tone was “didn’t they do well”. They held a parade for coming fourth. This country used to brag about ruling a quarter of the world. Fourth!

But the romantic heartbreak narrative stuck. Two years later, the Premier League would start a wave of modernisation in English football. The country as a whole was going through a cultural rebirth, feeling more relaxed with its post-imperial self if the world still listened to Oasis and the Spice Girls. The Handover of Hong Kong, marking the widely accepted end of the British Empire, was on its way. Importantly, Euro 96 was to be held in England. This was a big opportunity to show the rest of Europe that England had moved on from the era of hooliganism with a more positive fan atmosphere and modernised stadiums.

But there was an interesting wrinkle. England had been drawn to play Scotland in the opening game. This fixture had never happened at a major tournament. Scotland itself was on the verge of getting its own parliament and government, providing a small crumb of independence. An England that had pretended itself to be basically the same thing as Britain suddenly couldn’t do it anymore. The country had to find a way to say “this is England, specifically England, not Britain”. The only major institution England had to itself was a football team, so that was where it had to start.

I doubt anyone knew they were doing it, but a decade after Maradona shattered the last remnants of the imperial image, a new national mythology was conjured up within one verse of a song:

“Everyone seems to know the score, they’ve seen it all before

They just know, they’re so sure

That England’s gonna throw it away, gonna blow it away

But I know they can play, ‘cause I remember”

Yes, “England” was invented in 1996 by Frank Skinner and David Baddiel. No, I’m not particularly happy about this, either.

To put it another way: England didn’t invent football. Football invented England.

We suddenly had a completely new framework to understand this country south of Scotland and east of Wales. It’s something like: “this country used to be impressive, but none of us can really remember it at this point. We’re all miserable gits about it, but if we all just believe, maybe something good can happen here again”. That’s England’s national mythology.

Euro ‘96 gave England another romantic failure following almost exactly the script of 1990: struggles, hope, belief, then heartbreak. That’s the narrative England almost want to see repeated over and over because the nation has learned how to process it. We can tell ourselves comforting stories of how Our Boys fought hard and just got undone. Unless it doesn’t feel that way. Unless England lose “wrong”. Then the conversation changes. Then the firing squads come out.

Thomas Tuchel made three changes from the side that narrowly beat Norway. Full backs Ezri Konsa and Nico O’Reilly were swapped out for Reece James and Djed Spence, which didn’t shock because Tuchel never seemed totally happy with his options there. The mild surprise was Morgan Rogers playing on the right ahead of Noni Madueke. Bukayo Saka (like a few Arsenal regular starters) has at no point looked fit enough to play 90 minutes, but Madueke had a shocker in the first half against Norway, so Rogers came in as an out-of-position third option. Lionel Scaloni only made one change, but it was significant: Giuliano Simeone for Rodrigo De Paul. Simeone is a much more direct wide player than De Paul, which changes the structure of the team.

The first half was… ugly. England’s plan was around pressing Argentina in central areas without the ball, and launching it quickly into the channels when they had possession. Argentina’s tactical tweak didn’t really work. Messi was playing as a striker in a sort of 4-4-2, with Julián Alvarez doing the pressing work for him, but the centre of the pitch was so crowded. He could never find much space. Conversely, England were trying to get the ball quickly into the half-spaces, but it wasn’t easy to find much rhythm there. The game was exciting because everyone was really up for it, but as a footballing spectacle, it was pretty dreadful.

The game opened up pretty much straight away after half time. Both teams were committing more players forward, with Tuchel and Scaloni probably both separately saying some version of “take the game to them”. I’m not sure this was a tactical choice or just about the player looking for space, but Messi started drifting out to the right more often as soon as the second half began. He’d done this in previous games, so it couldn’t be considered a shock, but the plan in the first half seemed to be to have Simeone holding the wide position with Messi more central. It changed in the second half.

England worked the ball from back to front well for their goal. Harry Kane drops into a deeper midfield role and pings a ball over the top in that way he likes to do. Nicolás Tagliafico cuts the ball out, but England have started pressing, and he clumsily gives it straight to Declan Rice, who passes it sideways to Rogers. Then, Rogers puts in a decent cross in, with Anthony Gordon making a run at the far post so he can score the tap in. It’s a really good bit of football.

Hindsight is 20/20, and these are the kind of things you only analyse once you know what’s coming next. But everyone in the squad and the substitutes warming up all come together to celebrate the goal in a big huddle. That’s the way you celebrate when you make it 2-0 after 89 minutes and kill off any chances of the opponent equalising. It doesn’t feel like the celebration of “ok, nice one, now let’s get back to it”.

England initially respond by keeping the pressure on, trying to force Argentina in the first spell of possession after the game restarts. But then that high press leaves them a little exposed and Argentina get a chance through on goal, only for Spence to make a decent last-man challenge in the box. Argentina win a corner, which they take short. Then they have a throw-in which they take short, and use the opportunity of everyone back to pen England in their box a bit. You can feel the players’ mood shifting a bit here. They start to mentally retreat and feel like they shouldn’t push Argentina or really go for the second. Everyone starts thinking about defending their own box. Even Kane is right in there defending. When the Argentina players are knocking it around their halfway line, England players are getting back into shape more often than pressing to launch a transition here.

Tuchel hasn’t done or said anything yet. The players just sort of do it. This isn’t me trying to absolve Tuchel of all blame (we’ll get to his mistakes), but it’s a very predictable England pattern. It’s what they did in the semi against Croatia in 2018 (and, for that matter, the Round of 16 game against Colombia they won on penalties). It’s what they did in the Euro 2020 final against Italy. It’s just what England do when they go a goal ahead in a tough game. They retreat. They don’t instinctively think about defending in terms of proactive behaviour or keeping the ball.

Hear me out on this, but I found myself thinking of comments Gary Neville has made over the years about Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City team. “I always remember going back to [Guardiola’s] first season in England, and it wasn't a successful season if you remember”, Neville recalled, in the one searchable example of an anecdote he’s told a few times. “They didn't win the league in that first season and he said that the reason that they were conceding, he said it wasn't because they didn't have the physicality, it was because they didn't keep the ball well enough.”

The first time I heard Neville say this, he admitted to being surprised, because he felt they were losing games through conventionally British issues: defending the box, crosses, second balls, last-man challenges, etc. But when he saw Guardiola’s all-conquering City the next season, he got it. City were able to kill off games through control in keeping the ball.

The important thing is that this wasn’t an instinctive realisation for him, and I think it’s the same with most English players. They might intellectually understand that defensive possession is useful when you’re 1-0 up, but it’s not a tool they instinctively reach for. Crucially, it’s one that requires everyone’s buy-in. Whereas if a few players subconsciously start dropping deep, their teammates don’t really have a choice but to drop in and help the low block.

Every England player was sitting in their own third. They were giving Argentina time to work the ball from side to side, and giving a certain number ten room to work the passes he wanted. I’m not going to sit here and claim there’s some easy way to play against Messi. People have tried literally everything and none of it consistently works. But he wasn’t playing well in the first half. He started drifting wide because there was no room. Then England gave him all the time and space in the world, even as it was against a low block.

In the brief moments when England did win the ball back, it was all go. They were trying to pass it quickly up the pitch to get a second. English players don’t really think in terms of slowing it down. I’ve made this joke before, but we don’t even have a word for pausa. It’s all supposed to be now, now, now.

(I’ve realised I should write a whole newsletter about pausa, but for anyone who doesn’t know: it’s the Spanish and Latin American concept of a player pausing the game, taking a second to read the game with the ball at his feet, and waiting for the right option to present itself.)

Then the hydration break comes, and Tuchel makes the change. He takes off Gordon for another defender in Konsa. Tuchel’s argument after the game was that England were already dropping deep and had ceded control of the game to Argentina dominating possession, so if they were going to sit in a low block, he needed to do it properly by bringing on Konsa and switching to a deliberate back five. He made more defensive changes as things went, with Dan Burn and Nico O’Reilly coming on for Reece James and Declan Rice. Yes, O’Reilly was technically playing in midfield (which he can certainly do), but he was brought on for his defensive work.

Argentina start floating more and more brilliant balls into the box that are really hard to defend, even with five. That can happen when you’ve got Messi. For all that they were creating real chances, the equaliser they actually score is just a perfectly hit strike from range by Enzo Fernández. Jude Bellingham can’t quite close him down before he gets the shot away. There was only going to be one result after that. England couldn’t mentally shift into attack mode again after the way things had gone. So it was a question of whether Argentina’s winner would come before or during extra time. It was before. Messi gets to the byline and puts in a right-footed cross to Lautaro Martínez at the far post. Game over.

Tuchel’s argument about his substitutions was pretty much exactly what I’d expect him to say. Firstly, it’s a very pedantic position to take that lets him say he’s technically right while persuading almost no one. But it’s secretly about one of his long-term obsessions: how much information can you get across to players in the time available? In this moment, he decided he could not change the players’ entire mental framework of how to see out a game of football, so he made a rational but deeply unromantic choice of better managing the wrong decision they had already taken.

But the public had that tactical choice immediately framed by Wayne Rooney during BBC’s post-match coverage. I criticised BBC’s World Cup broadcast earlier in the tournament, but I think they got the tone exactly right here. Mark Chapman really brings the best out of Rooney, and that makes the whole panel work, but I’m getting distracted in an already way too long newsletter.

“When you make a decision, it’s a gamble, Rooney argued. “The gamble he made was to go with the five at the back, which allowed them to dictate the game. Then we couldn’t get out. They kept coming back, wave after wave after wave. Messi knew the space was on the right […] And all Argentina did was pick the second ball up, give it to Messi, let him go and do his thing. And we got punished.

“When Tuchel was making the changes, 100%, the players will have been stood on the pitch thinking “oh, no”. They would’ve known what was coming. They would’ve known it was coming at them. And they would’ve had to have a massive amount of luck to see the game out.”

Almost everyone in England has taken Rooney’s position on this. I think it’s worth giving Tuchel a little credit here. He did not sit there and think, “I want my team to defend in a low block once we go 1-0 up”. But he decided he couldn’t avoid it, and that gave the players an excuse to sink into their own box. The emotional message the players needed was to keep going, push higher up the pitch. Instead of Konsa for Gordon, the correct sub might’ve been something like Madueke for Rice. Then perhaps he could swap out Gordon and Kane for, say, Marcus Rashford and Ollie Watkins, giving England fresh legs ready to press hard. That would’ve given England more energy in the first line of the press while sending a clear message to those still on the pitch: do not sit on this.

But again, hindsight is 20/20. Perhaps Tuchel is right, and they would’ve done it anyway.

Then he said some things that really riled people up.

“I think ball possession plays a crucial role”, he argued. “It's maybe not in our DNA like it is in the Spanish DNA or Argentinian or Brazilian DNA to take the ball, control the game and the ball, which is also a big problem.”

On this one, I actually agree with him. “DNA” was probably not the best choice of words, as he’s obviously talking about “the way we instinctively play football” rather than going full eugenics on us (see: Gordon Strachan claiming he struggled managing Scotland because they were “genetically inferior”). But he’s describing a fundamental problem in even the most technically skilled English players. “He didn't bring Kobbie Mainoo on, who could handle the ball better than most”, Gary Neville said (shockingly starting with a Man Utd player). He didn’t bring Bukayo Saka on, who could probably handle the ball better than most. But he also left Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, Adam Wharton, Morgan Gibbs-White and Trent Alexander-Arnold at home, technical players.”

Ok, yes, those players are technically gifted. But which of them control games? Which of them put their foot on the ball and dictate the tempo, slowing down the play to find the right pass? We’re not talking about Sergio Busquets here. These are direct players who use their skills to open up games and create chances. They’re not players with pausa. English players don’t think in terms of slowing things down. They’re programmed to think about the “speed of the ball”, not about taking the time to make sure it’s going to the right place. This isn’t a wrong mental model. Cultures that prioritise patient passing can lack in areas where England are strong. But this is a much bigger, much deeper problem than not having “technical” players. It’s about how we think about using the ball, not how many #skillz you can do with it at your feet.

But that doesn’t absolve Tuchel of the choices he made. He said pretty consistently that he wants England to play on the front foot, bringing Premier League intensity to the World Cup, then changed his tone midway through the tournament. “It’s almost like every attack plays out like a fast attack”, he said after the Round of 32 win over DR Congo. “We need to worship more the moments and understand that sometimes, the door is closed. It doesn’t help if you rush into it. Try the other door! Find another way! And worship the ball-possession. Also, to recharge. Otherwise, we just run our batteries down with a huge effort and not so much reward”.

This sounds incredibly counterintuitive, but I think Tuchel spent 18 months doing everything to try and avoid exactly what happened in the last 20 minutes against Argentina. He wanted players to stay front-foot and keep pushing. He wanted them to be better at keeping the ball. He worked on these things specifically. But then, in the big moment, he saw it happening and concluded he was powerless to change things.

It is, viewed through the lens of cultural stereotypes, intensely German. It’s less “never say die” than “can we squeeze out a few more years before we pop our clogs?” And that’s part of what rubs people the wrong way here. There’s been a very classically British lingering feeling of “we’re cheating a bit by hiring a foreigner just because our own managers are rubbish, aren’t we?” People feel like they violated some unknown sacred code of conduct by hiring someone who isn’t just a foreigner but every bit the stereotype the English have of Germany. And that’s where the vitriol comes in. “We sold our soul to win it, and we weren’t any better than when we had Gareth Southgate”.

Some of the knee-jerk responses are a bit ridiculous. People seem to think that because he didn’t fix every problem, he needs to be sacked. Let’s let calm heads prevail here. Tuchel made mistakes. He didn’t do enough to deal with long-term structural weaknesses. As far as I’m concerned, unless Pep Guardiola makes the daftest decision of his life, Tuchel is the best realistic option.

But I want to see some changes. We need to see a sense during the Nations League games later this year that he’s thought about these problems and how to address them. England are playing home and away against Spain, Czechia and Croatia. Those are real matches where he can demonstrate new ideas on how England can improve. This was not a bad World Cup. It’s better than most of England’s tournament performances. But we need more if we want to win Euro 2028.

Yeah, this is the biggest gut punch of the whole cycle.

Losing the semi-final against Croatia in 2018 was disappointing, obviously, but it felt like the beginning. It was the start of being able to compete again after a true banter era. This England team would be back. There was genuine talent on its way coming from the youth sides. No one felt like it was the summit.

Losing the Euro 2020 final to Italy on penalties felt brutal, but the whole day had become such an exercise in toxicity around the stadium. It was ugly. It felt ugly. Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve been celebrating like mad if England won, but the whole atmosphere felt poisoned.

The 2022 World Cup quarter-final exit was the best England have played in any of these games. It just came too soon, and they lost in the fine margins against a good side. Aurélien Tchouaméni scores a screamer from distance and Harry Kane misses a penalty because that’s football. It was a big blow because England looked good in that tournament and could’ve gone far, but a really tough matchup that didn’t quite go their way came a little too soon.

Euro 2024 was a poor showing from the start. England looked obviously wrong. They played awful stuff in almost every game. There was a brief moment after beating the Netherlands in the semi-final where something felt like it might happened, but come on, we all knew England would need to hang on and get lucky against Spain. This team just got lucky with a draw that saw them to the final.

But this time? This one stings.

Euro 2028 is being held in the UK and Ireland, with England likely to play all of their games on home soil. That’s a far more favourable environment than the heat, travel and altitude we’ve seen them deal with at the World Cup. Football is, in the way the song originally meant it, “coming home”. Kane will be 34 years old, though most of England’s other key players should be at a good age. Tuchel is, from everything we’ve read, extremely likely to stay. Lessons need to be learned, but the focus has to be on looking forward. I’m certain there will be a lot of moaning between now and then. Everyone seems to know the score. They’ve seen it all before.

I still want to hope.

Manuel Neuer; Philipp Lahm, Arne Friedrich, Per Mertesacker, Jérôme Boateng; Bastian Schweinsteiger, Sami Khedira; Thomas Müller, Mesut Özil, Lukas Podolski; Miroslav Klose.

And then the England team:

David James; Glen Johnson, Matthew Upson, John Terry, Ashley Cole; James Milner, Frank Lampard, Gareth Barry, Steven Gerrard; Wayne Rooney, Jermain Defoe.

It’s all very funny. But I remember I got a really insightful reply from Connor Rowden, current technical scout at AC Milan and one of the smartest football thinkers I’ve known online. His argument was that both sides have plenty of quality, but Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose being massive overachievers at international level took Germany over the top. England’s long-term failure has been in not finding our (Rowden is English) version of those players, with him suggesting Jermain Defoe or Theo Walcott as hypothetical equivalents to Klose and Podolski at club level.

I think about this every time I watch the current Spain side.

Let’s break down the team a bit. Pedro Porro has looked better than 17th-placed Tottenham at times, but not by such a degree that he’s “clearly world class”. Centre back Pau Cubarsí is a talented 19-year-old, while partner Aymeric Laporte’s best years were supposed to be behind him when Pep Guardiola got rid. Marc Cucurella has been defensively shaky at times at Chelsea. Rodri has never quite looked the all-conquering defensive midfielder at Manchester City since coming back from injury. Fabián Ruiz has been in and out of an admittedly brilliant Paris Saint-Germain side. Dani Olmo has been solid for Barcelona, but Andrés Iniesta he is not. Álex Baena has been vaguely useful for Atlético Madrid. Lamine Yamal is a genuine superstar, but his fitness was a real concern coming into the tournament. Mikel Oyarzabal has never been thought of among Europe’s best forwards.

And yet here, when they play together, it all just works.

Spain’s overall game plan was not exactly a shock. They didn’t throw out what they’ve been doing pretty continually for the last 18 years or so. But I was slightly surprised by just how easily it worked here. They were always going to look to dominate in central areas, and France apparently just didn’t plan for that.

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England 2-1 Norway

In the endless discourse, there’s a question around this team at major tournaments that I’m surprised doesn’t come up more often, especially from people outside the UK:

What even is “England”, anyway?

Viewers might be forgiven for thinking it’s the United Kingdom, except Scotland also played at the World Cup. So that can’t be right. Scotland is also a part of the UK. So that just makes things even more confusing.

When Erling Haaland flew into North America to play at this World Cup, he did so on a passport that said “Norway” on the front. When Lionel Messi did the same, he used a passport that said “Argentina”. When Kylian Mbappé arrived in North America, his passport said… well, it said “République française”, but everyone knows that means France.

When Harry Kane flew in, his passport said “United Kingdom”. Nowhere on the document does the word “England” even appear.

It gets weirder. There are currently 211 FIFA member states (meaning “countries with official football teams”). Of those, 210 have their own governments. Even if Scotland is not a sovereign state, there is a thing called the Scottish government that does some governing in Scotland.

There is no government of England. There is almost no real institutional England. And yet they have a football team at the World Cup and no one finds it weird. So what even is this place?

Historians, please stop reading and scroll past my ludicrously oversimplified version of events from someone who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

The place we now know as Great Britain was divided into various groups of people in different regions since I guess whenever humans first set foot there. When the Romans arrived, they colonised the majority of the island they called Britannia, while the northern part they couldn’t permanently conquer was known to them as Caledonia (which eventually became something vaguely resembling Scotland, but that’s a story for another day). After the empire, Roman-ruled Britannia collapsed into various kingdoms, with some of those to the west gradually being seen as a separate place we now call Wales. Ok, so Scotland and Wales exist, but we knew that. They have governments and everything. What about England? Why is that a thing instead of a bunch of kingdoms?

Well, it’s time to talk about the other team here. It’s time to talk Vikings.

When the Vikings started coming, “England” was broken into many kingdoms, the four most powerful being Northumbria in the (duh) North, Mercia in the Midlands, East Anglia in the you’ll-never-guess-where and Wessex in the South. The invaders from Scandinavia crushed the Northumbrian kingdom pretty quickly, taking over much of the North before turning their eyes to East Anglia and eventually Mercia. Wessex was the major holdout able to survive, with its rulers gradually clawing back land and eventually becoming the first people to ever rule almost all of what we now consider “England” as a single kingdom when they conquered York in 927.

York and other parts might have changed hands a few more times after that, but the notion that England could be one entity ruled by a single monarch was now in place. This set the scene for Danish rule the following century, with King Cnut briefly overseeing a North Sea empire formed of Denmark, England and… Norway.

So one might say this game has some history attached.

Thomas Tuchel’s major considerations were about fitness and availability more than tactics. Neither Reece James nor Djed Spence were fully fit, while Jarell Quansah was suspended (no comment). He thus opted for Ezri Konsa at right back, with John Stones coming in at centre back. Bukayo Saka still didn’t have 90 minutes in him, so Noni Madueke was chosen on the right instead. But Declan Rice made it into the starting lineup despite his own fitness concerns.

Tuchel used Rice differently to any previous game, playing him as the deepest midfielder instead of having Elliot Anderson sit behind. This might have been because Rice couldn’t run as much as usual, or it might have been a tactical move to get more physical presence in deeper areas. England dominated the opening period comfortably while creating almost nothing. The game looked incredibly sterile, with Norway sitting deep unable to pack a punch and England passing it sideways with no threat.

The game started to open up more, with Norway taking more risks and realising England were pretty vulnerable to getting pressed. The goal itself comes that way, as they win the ball back from Harry Kane before Andreas Schjelderup scores either a stunning shot or a mishit cross from the left. Either way, the end result is the same and it’s 1-0.

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France 2-0 Morocco

Coming up against France must be an emotionally brutal experience.

You can tactically adapt your game. You can spend a long time working on structure and automatisms and all the things you need to do. You can go to the ends of the earth doing absolutely everything you can to get the most out of whatever raw talent you possess.

France won’t do any of that. And they’ll still beat you. They have the best players.

Morocco played a low block aimed at frustrating France and it worked for long stretches. I still don’t see France having answers to this beyond “our players do their thing”. The big chance of the first half came when they got to counter attack into space, with Michael Olise picking out Kylian Mbappé before Noussair Mazraoui stuck a leg out and gave away a penalty. Perhaps the “cool” thing for players claiming to be the best in the world is to miss penalties now, because Mbappé had a shocker of an effort.

Outside of the penalty, France were reasonable at creating chances. I’m not sure they’re especially impressive at breaking down set defences, but the moment you get just a little exposed, they can open you up like a book. Every slight mistake becomes a counter. As soon as Olise can pick out Mbappé, Désiré Doué or Ousmane Dembélé running into space, it’s too late.

The first goal came in what must have felt brutal to Morocco’s defenders. Mbappé had the ball on the edge of the ball against a low block. They were reasonably tight to him with three red shirts right in front of his view of the goal. And then Mbappé just struck the ball perfectly. Morocco made mistakes in this game, but that situation was a true one where there’s nothing you can do to stop him. He has so little space to get any kind of shot away, let alone one that good. Sorry, guys, but Mbappé is French and that’s that.

During the 2010s, it felt like most of the major superstars couldn’t deliver for their countries the way they did at club level. This era is different, with the tier one biggest names almost all performing at the World Cup. Mbappé has led the way on that, and it’s really been a delight to see. He’s almost certainly ending his career as the tournament’s top scorer, and it’s not just because he’s really good at football. It’s because he always turns up at the World Cup. If he retired tomorrow, I’d remember his best performances for France first, before PSG or Real Madrid. I didn’t think that would happen again with a major global superstar.

The second goal was another individual doing his thing, this time Dembélé. Normally we’d be thinking about how to get all of these guys in a coherent tactical framework where they can complement each other and use the space on the pitch best. The French model sometimes feels like: “why bother? We have the best players. If we make sure they’re in the right frame of mind to give it their best, we will win”. They’re always solidly disciplined in defence, though without really getting tested most of this tournament. In attack, though, it’s superstars and vibes.

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Some of my toothache problems that have been happening for a while have flared up again quite badly today. The newsletter on France’s win over Morocco has been delayed a bit because of it. It should hopefully come out alongside the Spain vs Belgium newsletter.

Thank you for understanding.

Well, there was a really good football match yesterday! And also another one. And then there’s nothing today, which means I should really be relaxing.

Now let’s talk Argentina.

Argentina 3-2 Egypt

When the Argentine public struggled to totally warm to Lionel Messi early in his career, they didn’t need him to win the World Cup.

“The world's best footballer is an Argentinian who, in his own country, has [fewer] fans than a referee”, according to Argentine newspaper La Nación in 2010. "All the players have fans in Argentina, except Messi, who left when he was 13 to pursue the footballing dream which he could not fulfil in his country. Gonzalo Higuaín was born in Brest, but no Argentinian fan would think of calling him 'The Frenchman', as they do with Messi when they provocatively call him 'The Catalan'“.

And what, you might wonder, did La Nación say of him after Argentina’s 3-2 win over Egypt?

“Those tears did not stop rolling down the cheeks of the great captain”, the paper wrote (translated by Google Translate, so apologies if it’s inaccurate). “They symbolised the suffering of the whole country, the relief of their companions. The joy of the best of ours. And if he’s happy, we all are.

“We all grew up with him. We’re all excited about him. We all cry with him.”

They didn’t need him to win. They didn’t need him to score goals.

They needed him to suffer.

They needed him to hurt when they were hurting. They needed to know he was mortal. They needed to know how much it meant to him. They needed to see that he was one of them.

Every time he’s had to struggle and fight in a white and sky blue shirt, he’s shown them that.

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Portugal 0-1 Spain

When low-scoring games are disappointing, it’s often not that they lacked quality, because this didn’t. It’s that goals “change games” and shift states, which we didn’t get here. It was all one phase.

A lot is being said about Cristiano Ronaldo, so let’s start there. I don’t think this was his worst performance at the World Cup. He’s strange in that he’s very old and has clearly physically declined, but he’s only really been useful in games where Portugal can attack in transition. He wasn’t good here, but this sort of game better mitigates that he can be a black hole in possession. He had one meaningful chance he couldn’t quite score, but this becomes a different conversation in that universe.

If anything, Portugal probably should’ve leaned into playing on the transition. There are things Portuguese football does better than Spanish football and close-knit fluid passing sequences isn’t one of them. Hypothetically, a more direct 3-4-1-2 with Bruno Fernandes behind Ronaldo and Gonçalo Ramos might have posed different problems for Spain, sitting a little deeper rather than contesting the midfield so much.

From a Spanish point of view, I still don’t think this side is as balanced as the one we saw at Euro 2024. Nico Williams is not necessarily more talented than the players out there, but he gave them a different kind of directness on the left. We haven’t really seen the fragility of post-injury Rodri tested, but perhaps it’s coming.

I’m pretty confident they will beat Belgium, though. I’d be pretty confident in plenty of teams beating Belgium. But not one particular side.

United States 1-4 Belgium

I like to tell myself I offer more detailed analysis than you’re likely to find from someone in the pub. I like to think of myself as more nuanced than that. But my only response watching this game was to think “they properly bottled it”.

Or, as the Americans in the stadium would say, they “choked”.

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Ok, ok, it’s out of my system. Let’s talk football.

Brazil 1-2 Norway

Carlo Ancelotti knows that his “main” job isn’t coaching a tactical system.

He didn’t always know this. He played for Arrigo Sacchi, Italian football’s greatest ever tactical innovator if not the country’s most successful manager in terms of trophies (Ancelotti himself might have the best claim to that), then worked his first coaching job as Sacchi’s assistant at the Italy national team before moving into management. In his early jobs, he was truly following Sacchi’s principles. Think Pep Guardiola and Johan Cruyff. He would force players to adapt to The System. But things changed.

Ancelotti’s Parma came close to signing Roberto Baggio, one of the most gifted and celebrated players in the country. But the manager wasn’t sure. “I had one system that I learnt at Milan from Arrigo Sacchi”, Ancelotti recalled. “It was 4-4-2. And for this I refused to have Roberto Baggio at Parma because he wanted to play No10. I said, ‘No, I don’t play No10.’ He was one of the best players in the world at the time and I refused to have him because I just wanted to play with two strikers.

“Today, I would say, ‘Baggio, come to Parma, and we’ll arrange the situation.’ Instead, I told him, ‘Listen, Roberto, there is no space for you’ — and he went to Bologna instead. It was a mistake and I tried to change my idea when I went to Juventus. I had [Zinedine, but come on, you didn’t need me to tell you that] Zidane, and he was No10. Should I put him right, or left? Impossible. Zidane is the most important player in my team and he has to be No10 and I have to adapt. From there I always took into account the characteristics of the players to build the system.”

From there, Ancelotti completely flipped. He adapted to fit the needs of the job and surroundings. That meant finding roles for star players. But, crucially, it meant doing what his bosses wanted. I can’t find a link for this right now, but I’ve heard Tim Vickery say quite a few times that Ancelotti describes his job as to “make the President happy”.

After Juventus, Ancelotti headed to Milan, working for the most calm-headed, reasonable and normal chairman in football, Silvio Berlusconi. The Donald Trump of Italy clearly loved the glamour of big name superstars, with a team built around Rui Costa, Andriy Shevchenko and Filippo Inzaghi apparently not enough. During Ancelotti’s long spell at Milan, the club signed all of Rivaldo, Clarence Seedorf, Kaká, Cafu, Hernán Crespo, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and David Beckham. Ancelotti had to become skilled at keeping Berlusconi happy by playing the superstars and making sure they didn’t go and complain to the country’s Prime Minister.

Then he went to Chelsea, working with another extremely normal man in Roman Abramovich. Chelsea were more trigger happy than forcing stars into the team, so Ancelotti was able to win the league title by building a positive environment before things fell apart the next year. The one big signing forced on him was Fernando Torres, who didn’t really fit what Ancelotti wanted to do yet the manager continually worked to accommodate him alongside Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka. No one would deliberately construct an attack of those three, but Ancelotti really did try to make it work where most managers would’ve left one on the bench and fought with Abramovich over it.

Then came Real Madrid. That club is all about keeping Florentino Pérez happy. Ancelotti never wavered in his aims to keep everyone involved and make sure the Presidents signings started. No one ever checked out. Bust ups were avoided. He made the President happy.

Now, he’s at Brazil, and the “President” so to speak is essentially the Brazilian public.

Since arriving in the job, Ancelotti has generally preferred a 4-4-2. This let him get the attackers he wanted on the pitch. But, like just about every Brazil team I’ve watched in my lifetime, they don’t have the midfielders to control games, especially in a 4-4-2. The big breakthrough of the past year was bringing in Lucas Paquetá nominally as a wide player, but moving into midfield and adding the numerical superiority. This let things click to an extent, until it went very wrong in the first half of Japan. Losing Raphinha earlier in the tournament was a huge blow, but losing Paquetá forced a rethink. It actually saved the game in the second half against Japan when they switched to throwing people forward and crossing the ball in a true 4-4-2 shape, but it’s not a starting strategy. It doesn’t have enough control. Ancelotti needed to rethink things here and he just didn’t.

Brazil get a fairly early penalty that Bruno Guimarães misses. It happens. But they didn’t create an awful lot after that. They were very open in midfield because, for the millionth time, Casemiro can’t run like he used to. This was obviously the wrong tactical format. Ancelotti’s first thought with subs should’ve been fixing that. Instead he changed the striker, and in fairness, Endrick did contribute more than Matheus Cunha. He’s clearly a talent. But it wasn’t a real fix.

Endrick, though, is who the people wanted. The public wanted him on the pitch. And they wanted someone else. They wanted Neymar, the man Ancelotti clearly didn’t want to call up.

The subs probably threw away the game because they didn’t offer more control. They made things more vertical and more exposed. Erling Haaland is a machine and there’s nothing to be done about that, so you have to find a way to control the game first.

Ancelotti played to the crowd when something else was needed. He was the gentle compromising force when Brazil needed someone who could tell them hard truths about how to play football. I don’t know what comes next for them. I do know Norway now play England, so let’s talk about the other game here.

Mexico 2-3 England

Thomas Tuchel was talking differently this time.

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I think both of these matches raised some interesting questions for the sides involved. The trend of the last two days seems to be “you’re going to have to work for it this time”. Let’s discuss what went on.

Canada 0-3 Morocco

Why didn’t Canada think of Morocco’s “just score your chances” strategy?

Jesse Marsch was a little less gung-ho about the pressing in this game, but the Canadian strategy was still to force transitions and hit Morocco fast. They got a good counter-pressing situation going 10 minutes in, winning the ball back in Morocco’s half, but goalkeeper Yassine Bounou was in a good position to save Tani Oluwaseyi’s shot. After Canada really went for it early on, Morocco were able to get into better a passing rhythm and slow the game down. I’ve gone on about this a lot, but the “Red Bull” playing style has the rather ginormous flaw that teams can choose not to play in a way that allows lots of transitions. At the same time, Canada’s mid block did frustrate Morocco pretty well. It was a drab half.

Early in the second half, Azzedine Ounahi scores a low drive on the edge of the box with a sea of bodies in the way. That’s really just an incredibly unlikely chance to be scored, but it’s one that changed the game.

These teams got back to cancelling each other out for most of the second half, until Canada really had to throw players forward in search of an equaliser and got caught on the break. That’s fine. Canada had to take those risks. But Morocco score their second and third meaningful chances of the match. The shots just went in.

Morocco played Canada basically level and got a little lucky with the scoreline here. They’re now facing some plucky minnows from just north of Spain and west of Italy. We’ll see how that goes.

Paraguay 0-1 France

We finally saw them struggle.

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We made it through three games a day and the schedule lightens up now. I am aware this is a huge disappointment for a lot of you, but it is a massive win for my own sanity. Let’s get going.

Australia 1-1 Egypt (Egypt win on penalties)

Ok, let’s talk about Mohamed Salah.

He is, pretty obviously, Egypt’s biggest star. If I walked around Cairo right now, I’m guessing I’d see Salah’s face advertising a lot of products. He’s a huge deal and Australia acted like it. They clearly planned for the threat of Salah specifically. When you’re one of the most famous players in the world, that can happen. He’s also not quite the player he was. That gives Egypt some interesting choices.

Even if he’s not at his best, he’s still a magnet for defenders. He drags them towards the ball. That should be opening up the game. But they’re rarely able to do anything productive here. Salah should be opening up spaces and picking out passes for Omar Marmoush, who can definitely still run. As it is, Salah hasn’t really impacted the tournament much at all. In a World Cup where the superstars have largely turned up, he might be the biggest disappointment.

Egypt probably aren’t fixing this in time for the game against Argentina, in which no one will consider Salah the most famous man on the pitch. But it’s a disappointment. I’ve watched a lot of football over the past year that didn’t have any idea how to use Salah. It’s a shame this tournament might be the last we see of him at the highest level.

Argentina 3-2 Cabo Verde

If Argentina are to win the World Cup, this will be the turning point. This is the moment they stopped acting like it’s a fun exhibition tournament to celebrate Lionel Messi and realised it’s time for serious business.

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Spain 3-0 Austria

Spain heard you all saying France were running away with this.

Spain picked the side that beat Saudi Arabia 4-0 and should probably be regarded as their first choice eleven. True to their ideals of how football should be played, they got the ball in the net through a meat wall corner that VAR then ruled out. I continue to enjoy that the World Cup isn’t letting these things slide the way the Premier League does. It meant they had to play some real football to get ahead. Pedri shifts it out wide to Marc Cucurella, who plays a square pass to Mikel Oyarzabal to score. This was exactly the things I keep talking about: width, runners, linking well. England’s wide outlets often feel static and disconnected from the rest of the game. Spain’s players out there (and Lamine Yamal was important earlier in the sequence) organically connect to the players making movements in the box.

(This isn’t an England newsletter, but it helps that Cucurella was offering a left footed option. England never have a left footer popping up in those areas because Nico O’Reilly doesn’t get to the byline. It’s always a right footed left winger interacting with right footed central midfielders and attackers.)

We saw Spain work it wide again for the second goal, passing in triangles until Álex Baena was in the space to play a left-footed cross for Pedro Porro. They finally got the third when Cucurella again drifted out to the left to put in a cross from deep for Oyarzabal. They just kept hitting that left flank to great effect.

Austria were a pretty gentle tactical fit for Spain here. Ralf Rangnick isn’t exactly known for sitting in a block and frustrating sides. There was room to run in behind here. But Spain just smashed it anyway. Now they get to face Portugal on Monday. Spain are definitely the team from the Iberian peninsula I’ve been much more impressed with.

Portugal 2-1 Croatia

Lamine Yamal was one year old when Luka Modrić and Cristiano Ronaldo first played against each other. It was 0-0. It probably wasn’t as good as this.

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England 2-1 DR Congo

Thomas Tuchel is such a weird guy.

He can seem at times both totally flexible and utterly rigid. He’s someone who totally changed his ideas about how to play football from intense pressing and really attacking positional play at Mainz and Borussia Dortmund to something more calm and player-first in the second half of his career. He’s used lots of different systems and ideas. It’s hard to pin down what “Tuchelball” really looks like because he’s willing to adapt.

At the same time, once he decides on his idea for a group of players, he’s not changing. His system and approach with England has been basically unchanged from the first match in March 2025. The shape is a 4-2-3-1/4-3-3 hybrid. One full back stays deep to become a quasi-centre back, while the other moves into central midfield. The wingers stay very wide, even as they play on the opposite side to their stronger foot. Harry Kane drops deep and the most advanced midfielder (Jude Bellingham, except when it was Morgan Rogers) pushes up to make a sort of strike partnership. He could pick essentially any starting lineup and I’d still know the jobs everyone would be doing.

I don’t think it’s the wrong system. It’s probably the most logical use of England’s talent (save for one issue I have, which I will get to later). But it’s still frustrating how single-minded he can be.

DR Congo caught England with their pants down a little bit by starting with a 4-3-3 instead of the expected back five. Not every manager has to do a Tuchel about it. That’s what helps them score the first goal. They clearly targeted Djed Spence as the weak link here, doubling up on him and forcing him to make a choice. He loses the initial header he tries to win, so the ball floats out to Brian Cipenga who scores. This is the kind of situation where Reece James or Jarell Quansah might’ve just cleared the ball, but Spence isn’t as dominant in the air.

England looked a little shell-shocked after conceding. Tuchel was able to calm everyone down a bit during the first hydration break and things started happening from there. They were getting decent chances down the right flank, with Arthur Masuaku starting to struggle. DR Congo’s formation shape did expose them quite a bit more in wide areas. England got a decent amount of variation from players drifting out to wide spaces and putting in different types of crosses.

The issue I have with this shape in an attacking sense is that it doesn’t attack the half-spaces well enough. Bellingham can drift out there at times, but it’s not structurally set up to get players into that zone. I feel like that’s a part of why it can look static and disjointed. You have the wingers out there staying wide, then the central guys doing their thing, but it’s been hard to link the two. Declan Rice was useful drifting out wide, but that was more about him doing his own thing than bringing others into play. England don’t have a consistent pattern to link the wingers with Kane and Bellingham. I think that’s the missing piece. Right now, the wingers are a bolt-on rather than a core structural asset.

England got both goals late, but I think it was more about accumulation of chances, and those happened to be the ones that went in. The narrative obviously becomes about Kane. Once again, I actually thought he struggled until he was obviously brilliant. DR Congo openly admitted they copied their defensive structure from Ghana, and that sort of shape makes it harder for him. He can’t drop deep and play those balls in behind for runners when there isn’t the space. That worked brilliantly against Croatia, but in games like this, England need him to hold his position upfront. He’s also very low energy without the ball. England don’t press much at all because Kane jogs out of possession. But then he scores two goals and wins the game. He turns it on when it matters. Having him upfront can be a trade-off, but he’s clearly worth it.

England get through, with concerns. I don’t expect Mexico will approach the next game the way DR Congo did, so if England fail at the Estadio Azteca, we’ll probably be having different conversations. The intensity of the Mexican crowd probably pushes El Tri towards going for it a bit more than they might on neutral territory. I am very nervous about that game. I don’t know enough about the science of how altitude affects sporting performance to offer a serious opinion there, but it concerns me. Tuchel outright said that “it’s physically just not possible to adapt to the altitude”, making it “a huge advantage that Mexico will have”. We’ll have to see what happens on Sunday night (well, Monday morning in my time zone). For now, I’m putting it to the back of my mind for a few days. England are through and that’s what counts.

United States 2-0 Bosnia and Herzegovina

When it was good, it was very good.

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Ivory Coast 1-2 Norway

It took a while to get going, but it ended up being really good in spells.

The opening spell here was… cautious. We’re going to get games like this now that it’s sudden death. Norway especially did not look interested in taking risks until Antonio Nusa scored from a moment of individual brilliance to open things up. They did keep pushing from there through a pretty straightforward route: get it to the big man.

Ivory Coast kept going through a better short passing game built around getting it wide. Yan Diomandé had a quiet game this time, but Nicolas Pépé was more involved. Ivory Coast rely on wide players so much that they brought on Amad Diallo nominally as a striker, but he caused problems drifting out into the channels. Obviously he scored the stunning goal, but that’s what this side is built around.

In the end, Ivory Coast’s more nuanced technical game couldn’t beat Norway’s pace and power. Erling Haaland can miscontrol it and he still scores. He’s just lab built for international football. He’s so easy for players to find, he’ll out-muscle any defender, and he turns everything into a good shot. He’s continually reading situations well, reacting faster than defenders to the point where he often doesn’t even need to use his body that much. He currently has an xG per shot of 0.28 at this World Cup (meaning every shot he takes has a 28% chance of being scored). Trust me when I say this is a pretty ludicrous figure. Having another absolute unit in Alexander Sørloth isn’t hurting. It’s obscene. It feels like overkill.

Norway will now face Brazil in the Round of 16. I’m really excited for that one, and I don’t think it’s as obvious as it would’ve been at basically any other point in the history of football.

France 3-0 Sweden

What do you even do about them at this point? How do you stop them?

In very Didier Deschamps fashion, France started the game at a low tempo then ratcheted things up from there. They were getting closer as the first half went on, with Sweden leaving too much space in behind and looking vulnerable from set pieces. After everyone was so involved, it seemed a little simplistic that the goal came from Kylian Mbappé just doing something brilliant, but hey, I don’t think anyone in France will be complaining.

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You forget how good it is. All that time spent working out the various third place qualification numbers is over. No one has a secret incentive to come second. It’s just pure sudden death now. These were three of the highest stakes football matches you’ll watch. Let’s get into them.

Brazil 2-1 Japan

They got it wrong, then figured some stuff out and got it right.

Brazil, once again, didn’t really have an idea beyond “get Vinícius running into open space”. But there wasn’t any open space in the game, so they struggled to create any meaningful chances in the first half. All of the big sides seem to struggle with low blocks at this tournament, but Brazil have been struggling for 20 years now! Japan had a pretty easy time shutting this down.

It’s this same flaw that arguably caused Japan’s goal. Right back Danilo Luiz steps up into midfield and wins the ball. He sees that the counter is potentially on, so he’s trying to move the ball up the pitch quickly instead of getting a sustained period of possession. His pass is a little too casual, which allows Kaishu Sano to win the ball back and drive straight through the midfield. Casemiro makes the exact same mistake he did against Morocco: he goes charging towards the ball instead of waiting for the situation to progress. His legs have gone but his brain has not caught up. Sano is able to run straight at goal and score.

Brazil didn’t really have an answer to this until the second half. Carlo Ancelotti took Lucas Paquetá off for Endrick, switching to a 4-4-2 with Viní on the left, Rayan on the right, and Endrick next to Matheus Cunha upfront. “At first we were trying to achieve superiority in midfield, to infiltrate”, Ancelotti explained afterwards. “It didn’t work because their marking was really tight. They were really closed off. We changed at the interval to try to penetrate their area a little more. We crossed some balls and got forward better, so this is an evolution. We struggled to find space at first but we were able to solve this problem very well.”

Carlo, you’ve done my job for me.

Brazil switched to much more of a crossing game, getting the ball in the box for the attackers and midfielders making late runs into the area. It was effective because they had a good mix of inswingers and outswingers, plus plenty of bodies in the box. Gabriel Magalhães got involved with the goal, putting in a deep ouswinging cross from the left onto Casemiro’s head. It’s not very joga bonito, but it works. You can see from the race chart above that Brazil suddenly turned the xG taps on after half time.

The winner wasn’t from a cross, but they did get it wide pretty well to open up space for Gabriel Martinelli. This is basically the rationale behind my favourite football quote of all time: Pep Guardiola explaining his philosophy to Bayern’s players. “In all team sports, the secret is to overload one side of the pitch so that the opponent must tilt its own defence to cope”, he said. “You overload on one side and draw them in so that they leave the other side weak. And when we’ve done all that, we attack and score from the other side”.

That’s what Brazil did in the second half. They got it wide, they opened up space, and they won the game.

Germany 1-1 Paraguay (Paraguay win on penalties)

Germany had the same issue as Brazil, but it didn’t work out this time.

Julian Nagelsmann did the thing people wanted and dropped Jamal Musiala for Deniz Undav. But they didn’t seem to change anything about their strategy because of this. It was all passing around Undav without getting him involved. Look at the passmap from the first half (per the Futi app). They had a lot of possession in Paraguay’s half, but they never got it to Undav as the striker.

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I wasn’t sure whether this newsletter would be a shorter one or not, since it’s just one game but maybe there’d be plenty to talk about. Well, it’ll be a shorter one.

Canada finished second in Group B behind Switzerland, forcing them to play all of their knockout games in the United States. There has been a lot of frustration about this, though I do think it was a difficult problem to solve. Had Mexico finished second in their group, this game would have been Mexico vs Canada, and the US would be a neutral territory (though Los Angeles’ Mexican community might’ve made it feel like a home game for one side). The answer was probably to put Canada and Mexico’s groups at opposite ends of the draw, but it’s a little late now.

Canada were the side that showed all the initiative here. As is to be expected from a Jesse Marsch team at this point, their good chances came from set pieces and counter-pressing. I do think they’re showing some good moments when they get it wide. If Alphonso Davies was anything close to fully fit, they’d have a real option in possession. But that’s not the Canada team we’re seeing, and based on what we saw here, I’m not sure Davies will be capable of starting a game in the tournament.

Canada eventually got ahead right at the death when Stephen Eustáquio smashed it in from range. I just felt vaguely relieved that I wouldn’t have to watch another half-hour of this. FIFA’s decision to schedule a single Round of 32 match on Sunday before a triple-header every day of the week might be the biggest head-scratcher of the tournament. People watch football on weekends! Put more games on when everyone has the free time!

Canada will now play either the Netherlands or Morocco, this time in Houston. I think the sort of game where they’ll see less possession should suit them well. Marsch’s sides thrive on launching transitions and attacking the space in behind, and he’s constructed Canada in exactly that image. I’d love to say that they could go further than expected, but they’re looking at France or Germany in the quarter-finals if they make it that far. But Canadians should be pleased by how well their national side has performed.

Today’s Games

Ok, we have a real schedule today. First up is Brazil vs Japan, which my gut tells me will be very frustrating for the Seleção before they get a late winner. After that Germany take on Paraguay, which should surely be a banker for Julian Nagelsmann. Finally we’ve got Netherlands vs Morocco, which could be the game of the tournament so far. I genuinely have no idea how that one shakes out. The stakes were low for the later group stage games, but they’re sky high now. I’m excited.

Group L

Qualification wasn’t really on the line as much as a first/second/third placed finish. Both Ghana and Croatia needed a win to be sure of a top two spot, with the potential for first place if the other game went their way.

Croatia are the most annoying team to play against in international football (complimentary).

You think they’re all getting old. You think they’ll tire. You think that the game will swing your way. But somehow a bunch of geriatrics just get better and better as the match goes on. Somehow you end the game with a 40 year old Luka Modrić having more touches than anyone else on the pitch.

This was perhaps always a poorer fit for Ghana than the England game. You can’t easily sit in a low block and just give Modrić and co all the space they want to run the show. Though I do have some sympathy for Ghana. I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do if Petar Sučić decides to just whack it in the net from miles out.

Ghana had decent spells of possession in the second half that they just didn’t do much with. They didn’t have the ideas to break down a Croatia side happy to sit deeper at times. The equaliser came from a set piece and their only threatening chance of the game. Croatia got their winner the same way. This was not a thrilling encounter, with one team set up to defend and the other old and tired enough to only attack when they absolutely need to. But Ghana should have shown more ambition here. The Carlos Queiroz approach was the wrong one against Croatia. IF they wanted to win the game, that is. Because maybe they shouldn’t have?

Croatia now have a Round of 32 tie against Portugal, before potentially either Spain or Austria. Ghana actually look to have the gentler route now, facing Colombia then Switzerland or Algeria. Moving on…

I’ve watched almost every England game of the 21st century. I’ve watched many of them multiple times to analyse and write about. This was the first World Cup game I can remember feeling exactly like a qualifying match (derogatory).

Tactics Tom made five changes, though this was not a “rotated” side as such. Reece James’ injury meant Jarell Quansah came in. While Quansah is a centre back by trade, Tuchel has been using his right back as an extra centre back anyway, so it made some tactical sense. Nico O’Reilly returned at left back after Djed Spence didn’t impress against Ghana. Declan Rice had a knock, though Tuchel implied afterwards that it was mainly about being on a yellow card. The manager went really bold and brought in Morgan Rogers for Rice, with Jude Bellingham moving slightly deeper. Anthony Gordon was dropped for Marcus Rashford while Bukayo Saka was deemed fit enough to start, replacing Noni Madueke.

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Group I

Norway 1-4 France

Senegal 5-0 Iraq

France turned up in the first half. Then things got a little wonky.

The thing about this French team is that Didier Deschamps does not particularly work on attacking patterns of play. Olivier Giroud (who played an awful lot of games for Deschamps) was asked this on BBC recently and mumbled through an answer that basically said “the players figure it out on the pitch”. He likes a lot of defensive structure and solidity, especially in the knockout stages, but he’s happy for his attacking stars to find the solutions themselves.

In my head this is a very “French” attacking approach, but that’s probably just because I associate it with Arsène Wenger. It’s not very fashionable in the modern club game, but it can work in a different environment. France’s attack can be brilliantly unpredictable because they don’t have defined patterns of play. But it does rely on having pieces that fit together. There have been tournaments where Deschamps’ France have looked really fluid and exciting, while other times when they looked totally dead and dull.

This team is obviously the “fluid and exciting” version. It was Ousmane Dembélé’s day to show why he’s so useful on the right. Michael Olise can pick up the ball in central areas and he always has a choice of passing three ways: forward to Mbappé, right to Dembélé or left to whichever one of Désiré Doué or Bradley Barcola is on the pitch. Dembélé coming into the team four years ago made everything click because you can’t get narrow against France anymore. They’ll stretch you wide and they’ll stretch you in behind. You feel like you need to get tight to Dembélé because he’s so good, but that’s going to leave gaps elsewhere. One of these attackers will be in space.

Dembélé had the sort of game where three shots from range all went in. That’s both a testament to his ability and not likely to happen in every game. But France have so many different players who can kill you.

They gave away a stupid penalty in the second half and were fortunate that Norway decided to rest Erling Haaland. As often happens with France, the tempo dropped once they had the three points in the bag. Onto the next one. France will play Sweden in the Round of 32 and you vaguely suspect Graham Potter will play right into their hands. Norway have a tie against Ivory Coast that could go either way.

Senegal, meanwhile, knew that a stronger goal difference would boost their chances of staying in the competition, so they kept going.

This is a rare win for the new group stage format. Senegal were incentivised to score lots of goals in the second half. They got ahead through a set piece early on, then Iraq’s Rebin Sulaka picked up a red card. Senegal did a whole lot of nothing for most of the first half, at which point I’d have to think manager Pape Thiaw’s half time talk was “guys, what are we doing? We need to score more goals!” Well, it worked.

Senegal are into the whole third place route and it makes my head hurt trying to understand who they will play next. So I guess we’ll find out.

Group H

Uruguay 0-1 Spain

Cabo Verde 0-0 Saudi Arabia

Some of the best, most exciting football matches I’ve ever seen have been Marcelo Bielsa sides going aggressively man-for-man against Spanish-style possession football teams.

This… was not as good as those.

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Group E

Ecuador 2-1 Germany

Curaçao 0-2 Ivory Coast

How do we evaluate games where one side doesn’t need to win?

Germany were certain to win the group regardless today. Nonetheless, Julian Nagelsmann picked a strong team. I assume that means the message was “let’s win this”. But it’s hard to know how players approach things in that situation. Will they let standards slip if they know it doesn’t matter? No one can know, including the players themselves.

Germany got ahead very early then conceded pretty soon afterwards. Do the players then start to think “is it worth the effort to contest this?” Nagelsmann clearly didn’t. He brought on Deniz Undav again in a “chasing the game” strategy. He was approaching this in the exact same way as the first two matches. But there was nothing on the line. So how much does this performance matter when we’re evaluating Germany’s level at the World Cup? I have no idea.

Ecuador get ahead from a set piece. It looks horrific for Manuel Neuer, but I’m not a goalkeeping expert. For Ecuador, this was enough to see them into the Round of 32, though we have no idea who they’ll be playing. They’ve been fine so far in the World Cup, and they could reasonably cause problems by being stubborn against a bigger side, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Ivory Coast, meanwhile, did exactly what they were supposed to do.

The main narrative around this team has been about Yan Diomandé showing off his talents on the world stage and cementing himself as a guy everyone’s talking about. The kid has been electric in terms of his dribbling threat, but combines that with excellent decision making and a really impressive defensive work rate. Per the Futi app, he’s the number one player at the World Cup for both expected assists and progressive carries, while also being in the top ten for high defensive actions. He’s a triple threat. Senegal will be playing either France or Norway in the next round. The first job for either manager would be to find a way to lock up Diomandé.

Group F

Tunisia 1-3 Netherlands

Japan 1-1 Sweden

That will be enough for both Japan and Sweden.

Japan had already qualified for the next round, but a win would see them top the group. Sweden needed a win to avoid the third place kerfuffle, though a draw would put them in a much stronger position there.

The first half had big “yep, we’ll take a draw” energy before it briefly came to life. Ritsu Doan played an absolutely brilliant through ball for Daizen Maeda that made me realise we’ve seen an awful lot of those in this tournament. The defensive organisation at international level might be poor enough that you can just split an entire side open with one pass.

Anthony Elanga scored a screamer to equalise, which doesn’t actually speak well of Sweden’s attack. Alexander Isak and Viktor Gyökeres were only worth a combined 0.2 xG here. Gyökeres in particular only had one touch in the box and one shot all game. Graham Potter has got to figure out a way to get these guys doing their stuff if Sweden want to go anywhere but home.

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Group A

South Africa 1-0 South Korea

Czechia 0-3 Mexico

The group A teams all matched each other’s freak, and by that I mean, they were all kinda bad. Mexico was the exception to that. The hosts cruised to a resounding 3-0 victory over Czechia that cemented their perfect group stage run with nine points, six goals scored, and none conceded. Czechia was fighting for its life here and couldn’t manage a thing. Mexico, meanwhile, created three good-quality chances and scored all three of them. Funny how that works out. I don’t think this game taught us much about the host side, though. Their greatest challenge was South Korea, and Czechia is a far easier opponent than whoever Mexico will face in the round of 32.

We did get to see one thing, though: the return of a 40-year-old legend to his sixth World Cup; Memo Ochoa. The keeper came on in the 78th minute and lit up the Estadio Azteca as soon as he entered the field. The fans were cheering for his every touch. As much discourse has been had about aging stars and what roles they fill in a squad (more on this later), Ochoa’s cameo at the end of an already-decided game was heartwarming and fitting. For now, it’s a fun sendoff for a hot Mexico team that will likely be truly tested soon.

REDEMPTION FOR SITHOLE, REDEMPTION FOR ALL OF SOUTH AFRICA. It was unthinkable two weeks ago that Bafana Bafana could have it in them to come back from such an embarrassing defeat and end second in the group, but that’s exactly what they did. After missing the last game through suspension, Sphephelo Sithole returned to the squad and played a great match in the midfield. Towards the end of the game, as South Korea pushed for an equalizer, Sithole and others put their bodies on the line to perform clearance after clearance, and were rewarded with a cathartic win.

This was a weird one from South Korea. Manager Hong Myung-bo’s decision to drop Son Heung-min betrayed an overconfidence that was exploited by the opposition. Even if Son is fatigued, which he probably is given his issues with playing frequent consecutive games, not starting him is what puts you in a position where you have to rely on other results going your way to qualify as a third-place team. The star attacker was hardly productive while he was on the field, but one wonders how the game would’ve gone if he had started. I guess we’ll never know. South Korea, with or without Son, struggled in this match. It was a poor outing, and the team looked tired as a whole. South Africa deserved the points; South Korea did not.

Ah, Czechia. They can’t go home claiming they should’ve had more points. Against Mexico, the team registered 13 shots, only one of which was on target. They lacked any kind of spark or creativity and kept hopelessly lobbing crosses to no one. While set pieces had proved to be an effective form of chance creation up until now, you can’t throw-in your way to a round of 32 game (at least for now).

Group C

Scotland 0-3 Brazil

Morocco 4-2 Haiti

Last week, Grace wrote in the newsletter that she’d like to see Brazil tested in possession more, as most of their chances up until that point had come in transition moments. We didn’t really see much of that in the game against Scotland, but we did get some kind of clue as to how Brazil plans to make the most of their talent moving forward. It’s no secret that Brazil plays best at a million miles an hour, and against Haiti, as Grace mentioned, a lot of the attack was funnelled through Vinícius Júnior, Raphinha and Matheus Cunha at speed to turn the opposing backline and expose the space in behind. We still saw a good amount of that against Scotland, but Brazil managed to find other ways to create moments of speed in the attacking third. This was done mainly through the press and counterpress, physicality in and around the box to win the ball back and apply continued pressure, and quick one-two passes that allowed for Brazil’s best attackers to reach maximum velocity in tight spaces. Multiple chances arose in the first 45 from the press, with the first goal of the game coming from a defensive error.

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