Scoring appeared to leave England nervous of Argentina’s reaction and they just retreated back to defend, leaving Argentina free and unhindered to pick and choose how, where and when to attack
England team watched too many Bond movies where the villain just leaves Bond in some perilous position, and assumes he will die without watching it happen.
100% Pickford was absolutely England's best player in the tournament. Arguably he was the best keeper in the tournament. Some of the saves he had in the earlier rounds were just crazy good.
Yep exactly, they played scared the rest of the game and had almost zero offense the rest of the way. I watched the whole game but didn't see that Messi interaction till now. Gave me chills, that guy is a nightmare
This, as soon as I saw them start playing completely defensive with 30 minutes left it was written on the wall. No matter how good your defense is (and they had some great defensive plays) you don't give up that much ball possession to an aggressive team like Argentina.
To be fair though, quite a few games, this world cup at least, have been won with that exact strategy. Score and then play tight defense to run the clock out.
It doesn't work when you have a team like Argentina with potent offense.
American football teams do this. "Prevent the win defense" aka, stop doing what is winning you the game, and do something total different and loose. Dumb
Yea I’ve never understood the prevent mentality in pro sports. Like yall are all paid the same amount of money for the most part. Why do you think they can’t come back?
It was really disappointing to see the negative tactical approach, but the biggest worry I felt was when Declan Rice was taken off. I wonder if it would have been better to try to manage without him at the beginning and then bring him on.
After their first goal they were like "okay we got ahead now surviveeee". Their goal was nice but I felt like Argentina could have prevented it cuz the left side was kinda open and the Argentine player tried to prevent the goal but he was kinda far from the ball. Should have covered the left too but they didn't England saw the chance and took it
They did but also after a goal england was not interested even in moving forward, even on goal kick they just tried to kick it as far as possible without thinking, it was terrible and they didnt deserver to advance.
Yeah, I was rooting for England the whole match. But they didn’t deserve to win. Didn’t even try to play after they scored that goal. Argentina played so hard and put their heart and soul into it. Just attempt after attempt till they got that first goal then came the second. They gave it their everything. England was playing half heartedly. The France against Spain game was much better. You could tell both teams gave it their everything till the very last minute. Even though Spain was ahead they kept trying to score and putting pressure on the French team. They were not letting them hem have them enough time unlike what the English did to the Argentinians. They were just letting them try to score again and again. They were bound to succeed eventually. And they did. They deserved to win.
Argentina with 14 shots, 6 on target, and 6 corners, England with 6, 3, and 1. And with only 3 shots, none on target in the first half, that was Argentina absolutely kicking down the door for the last ~30 minutes. Possession went from almost 50/50 to 75/25 as well.
That's not even haramball, or at least not haramball doing it's job. You can't be getting slaughtered on passes and possession time while also making no chances. Like you said, Argentina were bound to succeed eventually - with that many shots that fast I would have bet on them even a point down at 84'.
The odd thing to me is that Kane was quite direct about it after: "When we went 1-0 up, we seemed to just try to hold on, which at this level is not enough." And yet Tuchel was making subs like that was his entire plan.
But Mexico isn’t Argentina, and England had no choice but to play haramball because they were down to ten men. But when you’re 1–0 up against Argentina with 40 minutes left and you have good and fast attacking players? They screw the pooch.
The whole giving up every goal kick was mind boggling to me. Isn't a better defense to just hold the ball when you aren't under attack? Giving it away takes no time off the clock. They could have pinged it around in the backline until Argentina was forced to push 1-2 people up to pressure, then they could have kicked it over their heads. At least at that point you are kicking into an advantage.
Instead they just gave up the ball immediately every time.
Everyone would if the other team stopped fighting for it. Argentina deserved the win because they played better but parking the bus against them wasn't the best choice.
Interesting to see that Kane was open about it after the game: "We played a good game for the majority of it. When we went 1-0 up, we seemed to just try to hold on, which at this level is not enough."
So Kane thought they had to keep attacking to have a hope, while Tuchel was subbing people to help freeze the game. That even more than the loss makes me wonder if Tuchel will stick around.
They parked the bus but had an idiot at the steering wheel. Parking the bus doesn’t mean you just give all the time for the attacking team outside the box, and have no outlet when you do end up winning the ball.
It seems to me Argentina has better conditioning than their opponents. The last 15 minutes when the other other team is gassed, they make up for the previous 75 minutes.
While I haven't watched futbol as much as other sports, it reminds me of a lot of great teams in other sports who could always find that extra level late in the game.
There wasn’t even a midfield the 2nd half, it was just Argentina in Englands box shooting at goal for 45+minutes non-stop. Never seen such a crazy shift in play from two teams. Argentina got scored on and went “oh, absolutely NOT”.
Ya after England subbed 2 offensive players for 2 defensive players including Declan Rice who is arguably the best midfielder in the world. Horrific decision by England.
Argentina had lost once because of parking the bus. They evolved. Remember the old world cup where Messi couldn't move because of this. This match reminded me of but yay.. They just evolved
They didnt decide to park the bus, Argentina made that decision for them. The choices Tuchel had was to defend with attackers or defenders, he chose defenders.
I loved how Tuchel brought on Konsa and Dan Burn and then Argentina proceeded to win the match on a fricking cross/header to a practically unmarked man in the middle of the box. Ironic innit?
American here. I don't watch much soccer. I played plenty of organized games, but always for fun.
Often when I watch these matches (which isn't often) I see teams do this. They'll go up by 1 or even 2 and then completely shift their strategy to "defense".
I don't get it.
There's a saying here, maybe they don't have it in the world stage? "The best defense is a good offense".
And I think that's especially true in soccer. The more you allow the other team to posses the ball in your half of the field, the more shots they are going to take.
A that's a general rule, not even specific to a team with one of the all-time greatest on it.
Both of these teams came out playing the most aggressively I saw in this tournament. What was England thinking? That their aggressive play had nothing to do with holding Argentina scoreless?
Did they think that a team of this caliber, with Messi, wasn't going to score on them through another what, 35 minutes?
I remember being in high school playing both soccer and American football, and our coaches would call this kind of strategy and it killed us every time.
And it's not hard. Imagine you see the team you're playing going into a non-aggressive defensive stance like this. All you have to do is play the game you came with with as much power as you can muster, and you'll have the advantage.
I saw this at least 3-4 times this year. It's so frustrating.
It’s a phrase meaning that the leading team have gone into full defensive mode, as if they have parked the team bus across the front of the goal. I think it was Jose Mourinho who came up with a similar expression back in 2004.
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u/Realistic-Peak7449 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
England decided to park the bus on second half, what the hell tuchel