England v Argentina | World Cup Semi Final | 15 July 2026

Laddick01 said:

Minor moment that really killed our momentum yesterday. 

Pickford, in the 59th minute, pissed about with the ball and we nearly shit the bed.

We never recover after that. 

Pickford pissed about with the ball quite a lot over the last few weeks,I dont think he is suited to this "total" football game.

Got sucked in to the shit housery early doors and bottled it once we'd taken the lead. Scoreline could have ended up a lot worse than it did.

Pickford had his good and bad moments. I know people said he had do but I think a top keeper knows the ball is going over when he touched it for a corner which led to the second goal. 

killerandflash said:

After the criticism of Southgate being too defensive, Tuchel basically had a free hit if he had taken a positive approach in the last 30, as that's exactly what most fans and pundits had asked for.

Instead, however much he tries to deflect the blame, his first sub set an entirely negative tone. Once Konsa came on for Gordon, the Argentinians knew that England weren't going to pose an attacking threat, and that their erratic CBs (both on yellows) wouldn't have to worry about fast breakaways. 

And that Messi would now have acres of space to work in.

100%. The whole football world knows that the most likely time to concede is after you have scored and yes, we retreated, sat back and weathered the storm. You do that and then adjust your tactics to accept Argentina were throwing caution to the wind and it was going to continue so leaving gaps and a lot of space to run into. It was a case of who would score first, there was no way it was going to finish 1-0. The argies had pressed the panic button that often gets pressed with 5 -10 minutes to go but they went early. What did we do? Take any pace we had off going forwards and effectively make it impossible to capitalise on the argies pushing on. Utterly, utterly wrong and inexcusable from the manager - he had rashford, saka, ezze, madoueke - loads of pace who could have galloped into their half. Shocking football management. We all know this so what was he playing at? We jettisoned the frilly / possession type midfield players to play the power and pace players on the break. This should have been exactly the type of scenario we were set up for as tuchel kept intimating when we were playing teams that sat in.  He has to go.     

Chris_from_Sidcup said:

cabbles said:

Deep down I think we don’t have the talent/quality/experience as there has been some pretty ropey moments/performances during the tournament, and we’ve relied on Bellingham to pull us through and in a similar vein Kane (you could make the same argument about Argentina given Egypt and Switzerland), but it’s the context of last night that has me still seething.  We got 30 minutes from a final and when we took the lead, the game was tight and our goal was class.  The first few minutes of going ahead, keep it tight of course.  But what followed was unforgivable and for me on the manager.  Do I think on balance of the tournament we should be in the final, probably not.  Argentina did deserve to go through last night, but it’s only after we completely imploded in how we set up 

I concur with AFKA re watching a Charlton game.  I messaged my mates before they equalised and said it’s reminding me of our league one playoff final against Orient.  We led, Jones decided to shut up shop and we saw it out.  The difference was we were playing Orient, not Argentina 

I don’t see anyway back for Tuchel but it appears the FA is backing him.  Kane has potentially got the 2028 Euros in him, but the next WC is beyond him.  We’ve got absolutely no-one to replace him.  A huge hole to fill

I think we’re probably now going to have to go through a period of a rebuild.  What a shame for Bellingham given his age and talent.  If we just had 2/3 more of his ilk then we’d be a force.  

I wouldn't say we need a rebuild at all. There's still a lot of young players there for 4 years time. Trafford, O'Reilly, Spence, Quansah, Anderson, Bellingham, Rogers, Mainoo, Saka, Gordon will all be under 30 at the next world cup. Konsa, Guehi and Rice won't exactly be past it either.

There's also players that didn't make it like Hall, Lewis-Skelly, Livramento, Foden, Palmer, Wharton, Alex Scott, plus emerging talents like Ngumoha and Dowman. 

So i think in most areas of the pitch we will be fine but of course the biggest problem we have is (like you say) we don't have any half decent striker at all coming through to replace Kane. 

If Kane doesn’t show up in the important games then we don’t need to replace him. 

Bellingham was class when he was up top for madrid before mbappe arrived. 

CAFCsayer said:

I think tunchels subs were inexcusable yesterday and the loss is on him... But I think he should go if Pep can be tempted, which I reckon he could be, if he can't I think we should give him the next euros

I dont think Pep would come,I dont think he could accept a situation where he hasnt got a club that can just buy him who he wants.He would have to make do with what he has and couldnt cope.

Callumcafc said:

Has anymore been made of this in coverage back home? If not, I am surprised because it's pretty scandalous, imo..

I don't want it to sound like excuses or sour grapes, because I know that it changes nothing about the fundamental flaw that was England's disastrous game management and England were 90% likely to lose that game before it got to penalties, but, if given a second look at this, there's not a referee in the world that wouldn't have overturned the winning goal and awarded a free kick to England.

When you also compare it to the disallowed Egypt goal against Argentina, it looks even worse, plus this was in England's penalty area and basically the next touch of the ball was Messi's assist, not the other end of the pitch to where the goal was scored from like Egypt's.

The biggest difference was the Argentinian rolled around like he'd been shot and Spence tried to play on but the impact and pain of the foul very much limited his ability to follow and close down Messi.

1) refereeing an incident in that fashion, because Spence got up and the Argentinian didn't, only goes to encourage more playacting which is an ever growing cancer at the top the of the game, and 2) as much as I'm not a conspiracies guy, this does absolutely nothing to dispel the theory that Argentina have been engineered a route to the final with the help of preferential refereeing.

I can only believe that either VAR did not review it or they did review and maliciously chose to ignore it despite the clear evidence to the contrary. I simply cannot believe that they would have looked at it and concluded, in good faith, that it wasn't a foul. Either reason raises serious suspicions of collusion or corruption.

The only real debate is whether or not it was enough to send Messi off.

Got what we deserved after going 1-0 up….sat too  deep and shit subs…should fire Tuchel…was he any better than Southgate ? Nope

Just heard Martinez defending their antics with the 'malvinas' banner.
For a bloke who earns his living in this country that is quite shocking and something needs to be done.