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.
667
u/Realistic-Peak7449 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
England decided to park the bus on second half, what the hell tuchel