England 1-2 Argentina: My Thoughts
A rivalry 21 years in the making
This game started well before kick-off. Honestly, it started years ago. The more I read about it in the build-up, the more I felt the vibe, especially living in England. This is the biggest cross-continental rivalry in football, or at least the biggest one I’ve ever experienced. There’s history, there’s beef, and the fact that these two teams hadn’t played each other in 21 years, and hadn’t met in a knockout game since 1998, meant the tension had decades to build up.
And here’s the maddest stat of all: Messi had never faced England. Think about how long his career has been, how many deep World Cup runs both teams have made in that time, and they never crossed paths. Which also meant this game was a massive unknown. The managers had a few days to prepare for a fixture with basically no history to study. We knew England would try to control the game and block Messi, and we knew Argentina would be physical. Beyond that, nobody knew anything.
Argentina won the anthems
The Argentinian fans sang all the way through God Save the King. You could barely hear it halfway through. And honestly, what did anyone expect? This is a proper rivalry. You’d be lucky they didn’t boo it.
But there’s something else here, and I say this as someone living in the UK: the England anthem just isn’t packed with passion anymore. With trust and interest in the royal family fading, an anthem that’s a prayer for a monarch feels dated. I’m sure the players don’t fight for the king on that pitch, and I’m not sure it represents the country anymore.
Then look at the other side. The Argentine anthem is an 1813 independence battle cry, written three years after the May Revolution. One anthem politely asks God to save a king. The other one screams about liberty.
And you could see it. Messi, who normally walks around looking completely unbothered, was screaming it out of his lungs. Veins popping on faces, the manager emotional, the fans losing it. They looked knackered by the end of the anthem alone. If anyone won the pre-match battle, it was Argentina.
Tuchel nailed the lineup
Credit where it’s due, because it matters for what came later: Tuchel got the first eleven right.
- Djed Spence starting at left back over Nico O’Reilly was a reward for his impact off the bench against Norway, and he smashed it. Really good on the ball, really good defensively.
- Morgan Rogers on the right was the big surprise. He never plays there, but Madueke had a stinker against Norway, and you can’t not play Bellingham. I really rate Rogers, and it worked.
- Reece James at right back was excellent, and Kane pinged some lovely balls out to him all night.
- Gordon over Rashford on the left. Correct call, as the goal proved.
- Kane dropping deep. He loves doing it for Bayern, did it in the Croatia game, then seemed to be told to stay high. This game he was back to dropping in, picking up balls and playing long passes, and it was central to how England created.
Then there’s the Saka mystery. Before the game, the interviewer mentioned the manager had said he wasn’t fit for 90 minutes, and Saka said he feels good and doesn’t want to disagree with the manager, but he feels fit. He then didn’t play a single minute. Either something changed, or it’s a clash with the manager, which would be really sad, because for me Saka is by far the best right winger England have and one of the best in the world. The fact he wasn’t even thrown on at the end tells me not playing him was a decision made before kick-off.
A good 0-0 half, and Simeone’s dirty job
On paper the first half was nothing. Something like 0.03 to 0.05 xG, no shots on target, and neither team managed a shot in the first 30 minutes, apparently the first time that’s happened since 1966. If you only looked at the numbers you’d call it boring, but the physicality made it genuinely captivating.
The referee let a lot go, and I think that was wise. People will complain about how physical Argentina were, but be honest: in the UK we take pride in exactly this. We love the physicality of the Premier League, we love soft tackles going unpunished. If you’re unbiased, the referee did a good job letting things go.
And Argentina used that brilliantly, mostly through Giuliano Simeone. He looks like his dad and he’s got the exact same energy. I’m convinced his entire role in this game was: commit fouls, fragment the game, intimidate England on the ball, get as tired as possible, then get subbed off, probably on a yellow. He committed foul after foul and somehow escaped without a card, which is crazy. England wanted fluid football, and if one team is determined to make it start-stop, there’s no stopping them unless your quality is much higher. England’s wasn’t.
I thought Elliot Anderson was probably the best player on the pitch in that first hour, alongside Spence. He and Rice were tackling Messi brilliantly. They stopped Haaland against Norway, now they were stopping Messi. It looked really good.
The goal, and the “scored too early” paradox
The second half opened up a bit, and then England scored, and it was lovely. Rice took advantage of a ball Argentina didn’t clear properly, played it to Rogers, and Rogers crossed for Gordon to finish in the 55th minute. A proper Premier League goal.
Now here’s the ridiculous thing I keep coming back to: it felt like England scored too early. That’s an insane sentence about a 55th-minute goal against a team that hadn’t created a single big chance. But watching what happened after, it’s hard to shake. If England had scored later, they’d have had less time to survive. Instead they gave Argentina 35+ minutes to wake up.
The collapse nobody can explain
A few minutes after the goal, England just dropped and crumbled. And I genuinely don’t think anyone can tell you why. I don’t think the Argentinians can, I don’t think the English can, I don’t think the pundits or the data can. Even Harry Kane said in an interview that he didn’t know whether England lost control because Argentina were that good or because England just stopped playing well.
Within six minutes of scoring, England were in a low block, basically parking the bus. I don’t believe that was a tactical instruction. It looked like the mindset they had against Mexico, except that game they were two goals up against ten men. That’s a no-brainer. This was a one-goal lead against Argentina. Completely different situation, same behaviour.
If I’m forced to pick a side, I’d say Argentina switched on rather than England switching off. This tournament they’ve shown they love putting themselves in difficult positions. They wait until it looks properly dark, and then they hit. It’s almost like attacking England at 0-0 bored them. They waited for England to think they had it.
How Argentina built the pressure
The important thing is that Argentina’s comeback didn’t start with good chances. It started with genuinely bad ones. A shot off target from the side early in the half, a couple of Messi crosses sailing out for goal kicks, corners that England headed away comfortably. But they were creating something, and they were starting to control the game, shifting the ball across the pitch and finding it easier and easier to bring it forward.
Then it escalated. Mac Allister headed one that Pickford saved just before the hydration break. And the clearest sign England were struggling: Pickford was literally asking for the hydration break. I know he’s always up to stuff like that, but it’s not a reassuring sight from your keeper.
The turning point: Messi remembers he’s Messi
If I had to name one moment where the game turned, it’s the Simeone chance. Messi had been tackled really well all game, by Anderson, by Rice, by Bellingham, even by Kane. He couldn’t do anything. Then he produced a bit of brilliance to escape three players and slide a ball into Simeone, and it took a massive tackle from Spence to stop it. A proper 50-50 lunge that was either going to be a great tackle or a penalty, and he timed it perfectly.
At the time it felt like a moment that could give England momentum. Looking back, I think it did the opposite. That was the moment Messi realised he’s Messi and he can do whatever he wants, even on an off night. From there he started controlling the game: the crosses, the corner routine where he takes the short pass back and whips it in, the dribbling. He ended up probably the player of the match. Enzo Fernandez and Mac Allister ran the second half too. Mac Allister’s best game in over a year, so good at finding teammates, and Enzo, who can be so inconsistent for Chelsea, completely showed up.
The goals
Argentina worked their way up the ladder of chances. Once the crosses stopped producing, they went to shots from distance. Enzo had one that Pickford pushed over the bar, a really good save. And very soon from a corner, the same short-pass routine they’d run several times in a row, Messi found Enzo with a lot of space at the edge of the box, and he bent one past Pickford in the 85th minute. I genuinely thought it was going in the split second he struck it, which tells you everything about the composure Argentina had by then. Hard to blame Pickford after the saves he’d just made.
Then the winner. Minutes earlier, Messi had tried a cross from the right, over the defenders, and it didn’t quite work. So he just did it again. Spence looked like he was carrying a knock and limping, Messi smelled blood, went at him one-on-one, and put the cross in. And Lautaro Martinez, a short striker, out-headed a box full of English centre backs including Dan Burn in stoppage time. That’s insane. Both goals assisted by Messi.
One more thing that made Argentina’s night even more impressive: both Romero and Lisandro Martinez were on yellow cards by around the hour mark. They gambled that they wouldn’t need to defend much after that, and they were right.
The substitutions, and the verdict on Tuchel
Compare the benches. At the hydration break, Scaloni made three changes and went attacking, bringing on Rodrigo de Paul for Simeone, whose dirty work was done: go on, attack, I’ve tied them down. Tuchel’s one was Konsa for Gordon. A right centre back for a left winger. Rogers drifts central anyway, so England were giving up attacking on the wings, and they were struggling with crosses, so a centre half sort of made sense. But it’s a message. It tells your own players: we’re defending now. And here’s the thing: England defended crosses worse after going to three centre backs, not better.
Then came Dan Burn, then O’Reilly, and at one point England had six defenders on the pitch, which is mental. After Argentina equalised, England tried to push for a minute or two, but with that many defenders on and the momentum gone, they had eight minutes to create a half chance and couldn’t. The tiredness signs had been there well before the equaliser: Rogers and others resorting to long shots instead of combining, clearances getting worse and worse. By the end it was long balls to Toney as a desperation move. Kane was dead by the end, which I think was the price of all that good work dropping deep. Bellingham was alright but couldn’t hold the ball like he usually does. England looked clueless and exhausted, and Argentina pressed the life out of them.
The whole point of having Tuchel is that he’s the manager who makes the sub ten minutes before the rest of us see it, where Southgate made it ten minutes after. Tonight he was behind the game the entire time. But here’s my honest verdict, and it’s a bit softer than what everyone else is saying: he took a bold gamble, it was just a negative one. His thinking must have been: we’ve shown we can suffer and win, so we’ll suffer even more and see it out. He had two options. Attacking subs might have got England out of their shell, but before his changes England were already second to every ball, and it might have just made Argentina score faster. So he crowded the box instead. It didn’t work, and now he’ll be criticised for going full Southgate, for doing the exact opposite of what he was hired to be. He knows it too. He took responsibility after the game and said there are a million managers commenting after every match. Fair enough. He got so much right this tournament, including this first eleven. But it looked like a mistake when it happened, not just in hindsight.
And it stings more because England have been here before. Not holding on to leads against Croatia in 2018, against Italy in 2021, the same pattern with a different cast of players.
Fair play, Argentina
Looking at the whole game, England didn’t deserve to go through. I think Argentina played the best game of this World Cup, and England played well too by recent standards. But Argentina’s spell at the end was the difference, and it’s the same spell they’ve produced all tournament. Extra time against Cape Verde. The worldie from 20 metres to beat Switzerland. Coming back against Egypt, after which Messi cried at the end, which shows how involved he is with the result of this World Cup. Every knockout game a comeback. They’ve scored something like ten goals after the 75th minute this tournament.
What’s crazy is that this is the exact opposite of 2022. Back then, against the Netherlands and France, they started those games playing incredible football, dominated from the front, and then got pegged back and had to survive. The Netherlands dragged that quarterfinal to penalties out of nothing. This time they’ve flipped it: concede first, let the opponent think they’ve got it, then unleash. They’re like an animal that only hurts you when you poke it. So many teams and players get complacent at the top, and Argentina keep looking complacent right up until the moment they remind you they never were.
It was a lot about momentum, and football is always about momentum. Argentina found something extra in their tired legs, in celebrating tackles and goal kicks in the first half, and turned it into expansive, spectacular football when it mattered. They deserve all the credit, and they deserve the final, a champion performance from the champions.
That was only half the story of these semifinals. I’ve also written about Spain dismantling France, and what the final between Spain and Argentina might look like: Spain 2-0 France: My Thoughts, and the Final Ahead.