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“I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”
As England’s World Cup hopes recede into another spell of heartache, let down in Atlanta by the latest handsome, cadaverous Mr Right, a little sadder, not much wiser, sunburnt, broke, eating Jägerbomb ice cream out of the tub with a spoon, this is a good moment to seek some classic New York romcom solace. Meg Ryan was right. Don’t be sad that it’s over. Be incredibly angry and frustrated on the radio that it happened at all.
The World Cup will now reassemble in New York for its ceremonial tying of the final knot, that interminable walk down the aisle finally complete. As for England, it will be some time before anyone feels like getting back out there. There must be time for shock, process, recriminations. There must be time for a spell of it’s not us: it’s you, Thomas.
Drinking in the extreme emotional reaction to England’s tournament exit, which was, for all its frustrations, still pretty much the same as all the other exits, it is tempting to pause before blaming the manager so explicitly. Here we go then. Another tale of much-questioned selections and a team that shrank on the big stage. Did you ever hear the one about the man who likes to complain that every one of his ex wives have had the same failing, they just don’t get him, and that goes for all 17 of them?
What is it with all these Mr Wrongs? Remember the last one? Open letters about the meaning of marmalade. Bad selections and the team shrank on the big stage. Thank God we got rid of him, eh? Remember the one before that? Ray Lewington must see Paris. Bad selections and the team shrank on the big stage. Before that? Angry, mute, foreign. Bad selections and the team shrank on the big stage. Before that? Umbrella stuff. Bad selections, team shrank on the big stage. Before that? Chilly nordic sex maniac. Bad selections. Team shrank. Big stage. What a run. How unlucky can you get?
But two things can also be true. The team felt oddly skewed and stodgy all tournament. Tuchel is paid very well to manage these occasions. And he did undeniably balls this up, with a major opportunity on hand to do the opposite.
By the time Tuchel appeared post-match deep in the refrigerated sub-tiers of the Atlanta Stadium he seemed already to have become thinner and more gaunt, to have become basically a skull, a depressed skull with good taste in tailored menswear, up there talking fluently about the need to retain tactical perspective, openly wrestling with how to respond to what was heading his way, because, as he said – and this is true – when you lose every choice you made is wrong, and every other choice you didn’t is right.
On the other hand it is now heads on pikes time. Everyone loves a bottling. And that is what we got here. What is the charge list? Mainly it’s the period 72-92 minutes in Atlanta, when suddenly England’s entire world became defence, fear, terror-ball, flinching for the blow. It was on 72 minutes that Tuchel reacted to his team having already lost all shape, will or threat of an attacking outlet by going to a deep back five.
With 82 minutes gone England had six defenders on the pitch. The talk of energy, balls, guts, fearlessnesses had all evaporated, replaced by what was basically an attempt to burgle it. This was a misjudgment. It worked against Norway and Mexico, narrowly. But neither of those teams feature a walking speed all-time great who will kill you just for the fun of it if you don’t press him, if you offer up a comfortable pocket of air.
This was dying with your boots barely on. It was living on your knees. It was what always happens. And this was supposed to be not that.
So Tuchel will also now be re-pilloried for his squad selection, which is easy and also allows for an unprovable counterfactual history. In reality the squad was largely a success. England beat the hosts and reached the semis. The fringe players looked happy and energised. The things Tuchel did poorly against Argentina he had previously done well. People sometimes screw up. Your tactics dad will not always fix you. Tuchel was heading for an eight here overall, downgraded to a seven post Atlanta, and with a four on that game alone.
At which point it is necessary to look at that wider picture, to look away from the idea of the magic man, the saviour. “Maybe a happy ending doesn’t include a guy. Maybe it’s you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over”. Not my words. The words, famously, of the romcom He’s Just Not That into You, and an excellent reminder that so often the deeper answer lies closer to home. Tuchel failed to beat Argentina in the moment. More widely he failed to beat England, or rather the concept, the abstract of England, which is always there in every game, your most feared opponent, in all its ornate and tortured exceptionalism, its heavy, heavy air.
The real event here was not minutes 72-92. It was the thing Tuchel failed to respond to in that span, the key event in Atlanta, the complete unravelling of England’s players on the pitch after taking the lead 17 minutes earlier. At that moment England cowered, dropped deep, held on, saw the whole of the moon, felt the line in sight, victory against Argentina, and shrank from it.
Tuchel’s failure was not in failing to foresee this. His rant (translation: controlled explanation of failings) after the Norway game looks prescient now. He saw this coming. He could do nothing to prevent it. And so England lost as they always do at this stage. Fail again. Fail exactly the same way.
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Suddenly England were being bullied, pushed back, feeling the full force of the Messi personality, out there hacking corners away with 20 minutes still to play. Tuchel didn’t want this. He urged them forward from the touchline. Harry Kane disappeared. His moment wasn’t exactly bad here. It just didn’t exist. Tuchel did try to fix things, went into overdrive in the hydration break, iPad out, down on the turf waving his arms in a show of manic energy.
The knockout games are often decided by those slack, disorderly periods late in the day, when the ability to control the tempo and the ball, the skillset of the elite self-governing midfielders becomes the greatest team asset. And England’s midfield still lacks the extreme possession-based craft that wins tight knockout games. They lost like this to Croatia in 2018, where Luka Modric just took the game away. The lost like this to Italy in 2021, when the ball just steadily disappeared into that calm blue cloud. International football rewards a cultural connectivity, a degree of intelligence and game awareness, off-the-cuff creativity. And the fact is England just don’t make the really high-end controlling midfielder whose game is entirely craft and intelligence.
And this is the real point here. Tuchel may have failed to reverse engineer a fix, to add a gloss from the top on a culture of haphazard development. But maybe this is a stupid idea in the first place. England have tried to game the system, to find a cheat code, to buy a very expensive high-end club manager, outsourced expertise.
The Football Association’s plan never really made much sense. Eighteen months to fix it all, and with a late start too because this saves a bit of money. This, right here, is the culture of short cuts, bodge jobs, confusion, lack of game intelligence, just expressed at an executive tier.
You can’t make a culture. There is no real English way of playing. There is a Premier League way, kind of. But what is that? The league is an international talent clearing house, rootless, acquisitive, cannibalistic, where very few of the key players in the best teams are home products.
What would England winning the World Cup even mean? What message would it express? This is how you win a World Cup? Neglect your coaching culture. Produce no managers. Create academy players who fulfil a brief but don’t really have a coherent style, in the way Thierry Henry has described the Spanish development system so eloquently. Then stick a highly paid internationalist club manager on top and hope it all makes sense when the pips squeak and a genius level player asks what are you actually made of?
Tuchel’s mistakes in defeat can be picked out, re-run, dissected. But he is also part of a much wider process, choices made, turns taken over many decades. England are much better and more coherent as a team. So much effort has gone into bridging that gap. It has narrowed. But this is still England, still out there being true to itself, still crashing in the same car.
