So here we are. A World Cup final between Argentina and Spain, and the lingering question for the English faithful is not whether they could have beat...
So here we are. A World Cup final between Argentina and Spain, and the lingering question for the English faithful is not whether they could have beaten La Roja, but why they never got the chance to try. The 10 goal thriller against France was a glorious, chaotic carnival of attacking football, but it masked a deep structural rot that Tuchel simply refused to address. Watching England operate in that semi final, the defensive intensity was understandably lower given the scoreline, yet the danger of Saka and Rashford on the counter was glaringly obvious. If you were going to throw them on against a tiring Argentina, you had to do it the moment England scored. You had to make Lionel Scaloni's men respect the threat, force them to leave defenders behind, give your own team an out ball. Instead, every clearance came straight back, wave after wave of Argentine pressure, because Tuchel left his most potent weapons on the bench until the game was already slipping through his fingers.It is genuinely baffling that, with a midfield crying out for composure and control, Kobbie Mainoo did not get a single minute. Not one. And the decision seemed to have been made as early as the Panama group game, when Tuchel brought on Jordan Henderson instead. England lacked balance, poise, craft. They had no one capable of slowing the tempo, no one to break the lines with a pass, no one to take the sting out of a game that was becoming increasingly frantic. Anderson and Rice are fine players, physical and energetic, but when you already have Bellingham roaming and pressing high, you cannot afford to have two players doing the same job behind him. You need a more cerebral type, a player who can read the game, who can dictate the rhythm. It doesn't have to be Mainoo, he was just the only one in the squad capable of it. That is a squad selection failure as much as a tactical one.Would England have beaten Spain if they had reached the final Honestly, I think they would have had little chance. And the reason is the very problem that cost them against Argentina. Spain will not give you the same transitional space that France did. They will suffocate you, keep the ball, and expose any lack of midfield structure. Tuchel's refusal to address this imbalance, his stubborn insistence on a midfield that could run but not think, handed Argentina the keys to the game. Now we have a final that could be a classic, a clash between Argentina's gritty resilience and Spain's technical brilliance. But for English fans, it will always be the one that got away, not because they weren't good enough, but because the manager failed to give them the tools to succeed.So as you settle in for the final, spare a thought for what might have been. England had the firepower, they had the spirit, and they had the momentum. What they didn't have was a coach willing to adapt before it was too late. And in a tournament where margins are razor thin, that was the decisive error.
