6 Comments
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James Boardman's avatar

I do like your comparisons here. It was well written. I was at the game yesterday and this is exactly what happened. As an England fan, yes I’m English. It was so frustrating to watch the team just go into its shell and stop playing. It was an spectacularly epic tactical switch failure from the manager. One who was brought in to stop these kind of things from happening. All in all, England surpassed expectations but to be so close and lose was so disheartening.

Steve Magness's avatar

Thanks a lot. Sorry about the loss. It was tough to watch. I thought they were going to pull it off.

James Boardman's avatar

Oh it’s all good. Can’t win them all (or not at all, as it goes) 😅

Sam Keenan's avatar

This is such good insight. As England fans we watch and it seems, so obvious, and the solution so simple, but there are so many layers to the psychologicy behind it (In addition to some very good changes is personell and tactics from Argentina).

If you look at Englands last 5 major tournament exits, twice we have just been beaten by the better team (France WC22, Spain Euro24) but the defeats to Croatia (WC18) Italy (Euro20) and Argentina (WC26) all follow the same pattern, take a lead, and then lose control of the game, and ultimately lose.

Like we seem to have made progress on our penalty shootout psyche, let's hope we can do the same with this one!

Gregg Wolf's avatar

👏🏻💯

Colm's avatar

Having watched the game I don’t think it can be explained only in terms of what England did. Argentina went to another level that can’t be explained only by England changing tactics. Doesn’t mean England wasn’t mistaken, but not sure why the conclusion isn’t that they would have lost either way