Thomas Tuchel: How England unravelled after Ezri Konsa substitution as familiar failings rob Three Lions of World Cup final place | Football News

Thomas Tuchel was England’s gambler. A squad few others would have picked. A backs-to-the-wall win over Mexico. Starting Morgan Rogers based on “a feeling from the coach”.

But ultimately, one wager too many from the Three Lions’ head coach has cost them their place in a World Cup final.

The stage was set to write history. A first-half where Lionel Messi barely left Elliot Anderson’s pocket, and England refused to be drawn into Argentina’s provocation.

The first draft was being written when Anthony Gordon fired home from 10 minutes into the second period from Rogers’ cross – vindicating the latest of Tuchel’s gut instincts. Football felt like it might actually be coming home.

But in seven late minutes, everything fell apart. In reality, it all hung on one moment some time earlier.

Ezri Konsa’s introduction and England’s withdrawal to a back five for more than 20 minutes against the reigning World Cup champions is easy to criticise in hindsight, but felt just as questionable the moment Gordon’s number was up.

Tuchel promised things would be different but we have all seen this one before. England’s natural inclination to hold onto a lead – and various incidences of them failing to do so – was one of the sternest criticisms of Gareth Southgate’s era but has dogged them far longer.

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

So there was an all-too depressing familiarity as they saw just 17 per cent of the ball and had nine touches in the Argentina half in the quarter of an hour after Gordon’s goal, inspiring Tuchel to introduce Konsa. The freeze had begun to set in, though Nico Gonzalez’s header aside the World Cup holders had still had not forced Jordan Pickford into a meaningful save.

Sure, something needed changing. But this is where Tuchel was employed to see through the noise and gauge the mood of what his side needed, making the unenviable choices which had to that point served him well. England had appointed him as a winner.

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

At half-time of the opening game of the tournament he told his players: “I don’t care if you lose, so long as you lose playing our way.” But he betrayed that courage of his own conviction as he, like his players, looked to hold on to what England had instead of inspiring them to kill the game.

Not only did that change in shape and personnel compound England’s defensive anxiousness, it robbed them of their most direct out ball by removing Gordon – their most in-form forward beyond Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane and their most potent option on the counter-attack.

Kane had seemingly still not recovered from running himself into the ground at the Azteca nine days ago, while Rogers, now theoretically playing off the captain alongside Bellingham, managed only a solitary touch between the change in shape and Martinez’s winner.

In those 21 minutes, the Three Lions’ possession dropped to 7.2 per cent. They registered eight touches in the opposition half and failed to deliver a single cross, with Tuchel’s initial game plan to exploit Argentina’s lack of width completely stifled by his own means.

The head coach’s intention was to use Djed Spence and Reece James as bombing wing-backs in the 3-4-3 he has favoured for much of his career but he is long in the tooth enough to know that already seeing so little of the ball, they would likely be forced back into the back five which soon unfolded before him.

As it transpired, James and Spence touched the ball just once in the Argentina half between them in the rest of the game.

Without more bodies up the pitch, England handed the ball to a team with the best player of all time itching to get on it. To a team who knows how and when to seize the moment. If Argentina’s comeback was not inevitable from that point, it was certainly predictable.

“We were too passive after we scored,” Tuchel eventually admitted. Shortly after his appointment last year he had criticised England’s Euro 2024 campaign, saying Southgate and his squad had been “more afraid to drop out of the tournament than having the excitement and hunger to win it”. You wonder whether he might have similar reflections on this performance in the cold light of day.

Wave after wave of Argentina attacks followed Konsa’s arrival as England struggled desperately to keep the ball. Even without it, the defender did not win possession back for his side at all – but did lose it five times.

Tuchel has previously realised when his changes have not delivered and had the bravery to switch things around. Against Norway, Bellingham dropped back into midfield before returning to No 10 when it became clear his influence had been nullified.

But here the head coach appeared as frozen as his players, bringing on Dan Burn and Nico O’Reilly to further shore up the defence instead of ripping up the script when it was clear the tide was not turning to introduce some of the attacking alternatives his side were crying out for.

Marcus Rashford and Ivan Toney were given just four minutes to make a difference, and only after Argentina had completed the turnaround. Bukayo Saka and Ollie Watkins were not even afforded that.

Captain Kane refused to criticise Tuchel’s tactics after the game but made his feelings clear enough when speaking to BBC Sport. “At this level, holding on isn’t enough,” he said wryly.

Perhaps Tuchel had been emboldened by the way England masterfully saw out victory with 10 men at the Azteca barely a week ago. But that would be naive against incomparable opponents.

Mexico had made their intentions clear after England were reduced to 10 men that they would aim cross after cross into the box – and it played right into the hands of the Three Lions’ back five that night.

A team built on passing football with Messi primed to strike were never going to play that way. And strike he did, turning provider for both of Argentina’s goals having been shielded so masterfully for the opening hour.

Tuchel was employed to take things to the next level. Under Southgate, England beat the teams they were meant to beat and came unstuck when they were underdogs. In that regard, nothing has changed.

In time it may be easier to reflect how that rousing half-time team-talk against Croatia, plus a number of bold attacking changes, and one particularly well-timed defensive intervention in the Azteca, raised hopes that Tuchel’s in-game management would prove the missing piece of the puzzle that Southgate sadly lacked.

It may still prove be at Euro 2028, after Tuchel already vowed to see out his two-year contract extension.

But until then is a painful irony that it is precisely one throw of the dice too far and a reversion to the defence-first football Tuchel had promised to eradicate which will instead now haunt him, and England, for the next two years.