Key events
Steve Farole gets in touch, and at length: “It was a pleasure to see you and the Football Weekly team at the Bowery Ballroom Thursday night. Great show!
“As an American, I’m bemused to see the English descend into your habitual post-tournament recriminations. The cycle is complete: after skepticism, then guarded optimism, you heeded the siren’s call of hope and now that your dreams have crashed upon the rocks, you’re looking for a scapegoat. Tuchel is an easy and, in many ways, appropriate target. England’s performance in the last 30 minutes was craven, his tactics and substitutions were negative and self-defeating.
“But stepping back, why did the FA think that Tuchel would succeed? Specifically, why did the FA believe a manager with no experience in the international game, at any level, would be the right man to lead England to glory? Of the four semi-finalists, England was the only one with a manager who had never been at the business end of a major tournament as either a coach or player: Deschamps was a World Cup winning player before taking the France job and de la Fuente and Scaloni both cut their teeth with their nation’s youth teams. You have to go back to Lippi in 2006 to find a manager who succeeded at a Euros or World Cup with no prior international experience – and even then, his achievements at the club level far outstripped Tuchel’s.”
Jordan Henderson is named on the bench despite a broken arm while Mainoo isn’t? Curious.
France v England teams
France: Maignan, Gusto, Konate, Lacroix, Theo Hernandez, Zaire Emery, Rabiot, Olise, Cherki, Doue, Mbappe. Subs: Samba, Risser, Digne, Upamecano, Kounde, Kone, Dembele, Tchouameni, Thuram, Barcola, Kante, Saliba, Lucas Hernandez, Mateta, Akliouche.
England: Dean Henderson, Quansah, Konsa, Guehi, Spence, Rice, Saka, Eze, Rogers, Rashford, Toney. Subs: Pickford, Trafford, Gordon, James, Madueke, Watkins, Jordan Henderson, Burn, Anderson, Kane, O’Reilly, Bellingham, Chalobah, Stones.
Referee: Jesus Valenzuela (Venezuela)
Team news imminent: the big line is that Kobbie Mainoo is out with an injury. “Kobbie Mainoo is ruled out of today’s matchday squad to face France due to injury,” reads an official statement. There’s been seven changes from Atlanta.
On Fox Sports, where they are currently showing IndyCar, they have just described 2026 as the “greatest World Cup in history”. Is that really so?
What of Deschamps himself? He had this to say: “I have a duty for this game. It is not a friendly. It is a third-place playoff. The players, staff, and I have the duty to reach this last objective. It is less important than the final. England does not want to play this game, and neither do we. But here we are.
“We have to set our eyes on that goal to be third and make this final goal a reality. We have this duty when wearing this jersey. In my head I know that it is my last match. I don’t want anybody to cry. The end is near but life goes on.”
There’s another team playing today, and that’s France, in Didier Deschamps’ final game. It is expected he will be replaced by Zinedine Zidane, his former midfield partners. Kylian Mbappe has been paying tribute to the outgoing coach.
“Today is your last dance. You, who have given us so much. We should have given you a better ending, but we failed,” Mbappe wrote in a message shared on social media. “Putting into words what you have brought over 14 years is very difficult, because you have been such a major figure in the rebirth of this team. People have not always known how to appreciate your greatness, but time and history will take care of that.”
What of Thomas Tuchel himself? He’s doubling down. Turns out the man hired to win the World Cup had no chance of doing so with the players at his disposal.
“I believe that three other nations [in the semi-finals] have almost expectations to win the title. This is not us,” said Tuchel. “France, Spain, Argentina expect almost they’re on that level that they expect to win. We are not there yet. There is still a gap to close. This is what we will do from tomorrow. We will not stop. We will not stop hunting. We will not stop challenging. We have things to improve in a football matter. And this is the context. So there is not a lot of room for drama. If drama is needed, if the blame game needs to be played, OK, we can do that. But I have the right to not engage.”
Jonathan Liew did not spare the rod.
Two years of this. Countless millions sunk on tickets, hotels, Ubers, shirts, pizzas, flags, the hours spent on Google Maps trying to locate somewhere to eat after 11pm in Riga, the endless psychodrama over Jude Bellingham and whether he should have been left at home or not (turns out, not). How we bled and sweated over this, over the minor details of the journey, over whether Danny Welbeck had done enough to earn a place in the squad or not (turns out, not). All pointing towards the moment on Wednesday evening when England are 1-0 up in a World Cup semi-final against Argentina and your entire happiness rests on whether a bunch of millionaire footballers and a millionaire German coach can keep their shit together for 40 minutes, or not.
The England inquest will continue whatever happens here. Here’s Ed Aarons.
Despite the Football Association’s best efforts to produce players who are able to “intelligently dominate possession” as outlined when it launched its “England DNA philosophy” at St George’s Park back in December 2014, there is still a shortage of top-class central midfielders with the technical skills required to win a World Cup semi-final.
Niall McVeigh cast this ugly duckling of a fixture in a positive light.
Yes, the third-place playoff can have a hungover, world-weary vibe, but it can also be a lot of fun. The goals-per-game average is higher than in the final, and the TPPO has never gone to penalties. But does the result matter? It depends who you ask. Back in 1982, France lost an all-time classic semi-final on penalties to West Germany, and were extremely laissez-faire against Poland just two days later. “Our hearts were elsewhere,” Alain Giresse recalled 40 years on. “We had pulled the plug.” On the other hand, Poland’s 3-2 victory meant they matched their best-ever performance, having also won the TPPO against Brazil in 1970. Plenty of other teams have secured a new personal best via this fixture, including Austria, Chile, Portugal, Turkey and Belgium, whose 2-0 triumph over a checked-out England sealed third place in 2018, and a rousing civic reception when the squad returned home.
Preamble
Should you even be watching? The game nobody wants to take part in – though is nice to win – is set for Miami. Should England’s reserve team – and we expect a reserve team – win, then this will represent the best national team performance since 1966. The best since is fourth in 1990 and 2018, previous third-place matches lost to Italy and Belgium. It’s also a chance to rescue Thomas Tuchel’s reputation from the shame of Atlanta. Didier Deschamps can sign off with a third place, to follow second and being champions in the previous two. It’s also a chance for stats-padding, with Kylian Mbappe eyeing the golden boot. See: there is some point to this game after all.
Join me.
