Only England fans think England f***ed it; everybody else knows Messi is inevitable

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16 July 2026

While

England

fans lose their minds, the rest of the world knows that we just lost to

Lionel Messi

and the world champions.

Perspective time? Mail theeditor@football365.com

The problem with the English is that most are only fluent in one language.

Losing to Messi like that was a hard pill to swallow. Watching him come alive after the goal and cement himself as the GOAT put the whole night in perspective –

Argentina

are the defending champions, and on the night, they were the better team. No shame in that.

What’s this got to do with language?

I read the F365 mailbox

like clockwork and got a headache from it.

Luckily I speak a couple of languages and went to check my sanity elsewhere.

Turns out the rest of the football world watched the same game and didn’t need a wake. Plenty of respect for

and plenty of “unlucky, Messi’s just something else.”

I love

. I’m proud of the team and proud of the players. We had a brilliant tournament and lost a game to arguably the greatest player the sport’s ever produced, right at the end of his career, on the biggest stage there is.

To anyone reading this from outside

wondering why the mailbox sounds like a hostage negotiation — it’s not the whole country. It’s a small, loud slice of it that’s decided misery is a personality.

That same small loud slice probably doesn’t speak any other language than English.

Thank you

for the ride. Spence to have Mbappe/Dembele in his pocket — you read it here first.

Tom Joe

…Time for a neutral perspective, now that the entire English Corps, nay, the entire Kingdom, has so predictably ganged up on Johnny Foreigner Tuchel.

Argentina were the better team overall and have won on merit. Messi&Co have simply outplayed

in the later stages – by a country mile – and there was nothing the manager could do about it.

Example: no tactical “surrender” will account for 5’8″ L. Martinez heading the ball into the goal, unmarked, from 8 yards out, while politely flanked by England’s decorative center halves.

Radu Tomescu @ The Dubliner (In Bucharest)

I totally get why we’re all losing our minds over last night’s game. It should have been so easy. I mean, it’s not as if

have won their last three major tournaments, or have any form for sh*thousery and coming from behind to win knockout games, is it?

Richard (it was almost like the other team knew what they were doing, or something) Pike

Alright, maybe Poch’s Spurs of a few years ago but as a lifelong Spurs fan, every-time I watch

it is just the same as Spurs.

5 minutes after the

goal went in, I knew we would lose 2-1.

It is not mentality, but it is a sub-conscious mindset.

England are just not quite good enough. Nearly, so very nearly, but just not quite good enough. That is just the reality of elite sporting competition.

England’s level is plucky underdog. No winning pedigree that you can rely on to default to when the going gets tough.

We may get there one day. But we will not have an elite level goal scorer at the next tournament and Jude cannot carry the team on his own. ATB

Ash

Tuchel is obviously getting a deserved hammering for last night’s tactics

, but really the whole tournament going back to the squad he picked has been a sh*tshow.

He doesn’t seem to have grasped that the Premier League, and English players in it aren’t bad technically anymore. We’re not prime Brazil, but he’s essentially taken us back to early 90’s tactics of big and/or quick players.

Foden, Palmer, Trent, Mainoo, all technically excellent players – even Maguire is decent on the ball, all either didn’t get on the plane or didn’t get on the pitch. Even Rogers was used sporadically whilst Madueke/Gordon/Rashford & a crocked Saka were picked over him.

This leads to the classic knackered after 60 minutes which we’ve seen in pretty much ever

performance at a tournament ever.

Last night was crying out for all of the above players really, Mainoo, for all his faults in not being a great sprinter going backwards – is excellent under pressure, keeping the ball and winning cheap fouls, Maguire, not great when people are running at him, one of the world’s best if the ball is just being lobbed into the box and the plan is to survive, Foden/Palmer, again, get them the ball, they’ll either keep it or win you a cheap free kick. None of this is rocket science.

Really the failings started when he picked a load of his favourites from either his Chelsea days, or early

days, ignoring the form of anyone since November, which led to him not trusting anyone who didn’t play for him before November, hence we had Rice & James (obviously both injured all tournament) but Tuchel trusting nobody else there. Djed Spence, done okay and it’s useful that he can play pretty much anywhere on either side of the pitch, but is he better than what a Trent/Shaw full back partnership would’ve offered?

Also, Reece James, I’m sure he’s great for Chelsea when he’s fully up to speed, but we’re treating him like he’s Messi, get him on at all costs in any position – really – he’s been fairly error prone in every appearance (understandably with his lack of football).

Onto the elephant in the room, is Kane a help or a hindrance to

these days? He’s scored in this tournament, but could we be better without him (I appreciate he’s England’s greatest striker), but dropping deep – too deep – to allow us to unleash the great wingers of… Gordon & Madueke doesn’t seem like a winning strategy, drags us too deep.

We’ve seen Premier League teams revert to quick strong No.9’s, and that drags everyone up the pitch. Having Kane dropping deep essentially crashed the space Palmer & Foden operated in last tournament, and didn’t help Bellingham this one (note that his contributions were one-off moments of individual quality, rather than good link up with a No.9). I don’t know who it is, but having someone who’ll sit between the two centre halves and occupy or run in behind them is what we need to really unleash Bellingham and generally have a bit more control, allow our midfielders to play forward rather than slowly crawling up the pitch sideways.

TLDR: Tactically awful last night. Squad selection led to Tuchel being hamstrung during the tournament.

are quite good technically but Tuchel has gone for big and quick players rather than embracing what he could’ve had. Kane probably doing more harm than good these days.

Jonathan, Winwick, Cheshire

…It coulda worked if he’d taken slabhead and TAA.

A proven late-game goalscoring lump and a highly accurate ball lumper.

Hendo going full kit w**ker was great tho. Also have to say I think Spence was excellent and previously had only seen him Bambi around.

Anderson more £13m than £130m and let’s be honest, Rice has been sh*t all tournament, taking that many corners all season clearly took its toll.

Finally almost back to real football.

Moses

So Tuchal relocates the chess pieces, tries to reinvent the wheel and the outcome is the same: we lose to the first decent team we play. Same same. Tuchel, despite being a better manager, was unable to improve on Southgate who is still by some distance England’s 2nd best manager of all time. Southgate implemented fundamental change in the

set up and the way

played. Most significantly playing out from the back and introducing tactical flexibility which had been beyond even the so called golden generation.

We got another semi. Saw some great players look great in an

shirt and cemented our place as 4th= best team in the world along with Portugal and Brazil (we’d probably have lost to both if we’d played them).

After decades of failure the FA tried to copy France and Spain and transform the way our best young players are coached and developed. The outcome is that we now regularly get to the latter stages of tournaments and our players are better technically and tactically. But we are way off the current world top 3 who have won over 10 major trophies between them in the last 30 years to our 0.

Our 2 huge barriers to winning a trophy are the fact that we don’t produce truly world-class players and our players have lower in-game intelligence. We have never produced a player on the level of Pele, Garrincha, Romario, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Maradona, Messi, Zidane, Mbappe, Platini, Xavi, Iniesta, Yamal, Pirlo, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, Figo, Cristiano Ronaldo, Hagi, Modric etc. Our entire football eco system is set up to stop these type of players developing on our shores.

Instead we say Harry Kane is world class cos he scores a lot of goals in the league and early stages of tournaments but almost never does anything in tournament QFs/Semis and finals. Jude Bellingham is also a great footballer but what has he done in multiple CL/WC/euros semis and finals? Virtually nothing. Steve Gerrard says Rooney is the best

player he ever played with but Rooney only scored 1 world cup goal. Gazza who is the best

player I’ve seen according to my eyes only scored 1 tournament goal in his whole career.

Since the 1970s the only 2

players who have shown they can do it at the highest level in Semis and Finals are Lineker (v

and Germany) and Palmer (v Spain and Holland). To be world class you have to show it at the highest level. It’s not just a label.

So let’s just enjoy being pretty good but still a bit crap. We’re

: we always get a soft draw, get to the latter stages, think our best players are world class and then watch them get knocked out by the first decent team they play.

Superstars win trophies. We left our only world-class player at home.

Ben Teacher

Don’t make the same mistakes of old and keep the faith with someone that does not merit it.

Tuchel’s errors in his substitutions were not a one off, he almost made a complete hash of it in the Norway game but was lucky enough to have been afforded the time to correct his mistakes. You may point to another semi final place as an improvement but he took on a team that was already making semi finals and finals regularly so he has not moved this team on. Add to this the fact that he had two truly world class players at his disposal this time round it cannot be seen as anything other than abject failure.

Whilst I had my misgivings about Southgate and his penchant for sitting back after a goal one thing that has his fingerprints all over it is the positivity that exudes from this team. I cannot help but think that it was purely that which carried us through this tournament. The vibes.

Tuchel has constantly referenced “a good camp” and “good passengers” yet more and more of what he’s done has pointed to him being increasingly divisive. The players’ reactions seem to also suggest this. Spence’s dismissiveness to him on the touchline, Bellingham’s unhappiness at his post-Norway comments and now Harry Kane who is rarely outspoken if ever now questioning the tactics in that last 30 minutes of the game suggest a dressing room divided but divided only from the manager.

Tuchel hasn’t changed anything, he’s rode on the back of the Southgate era positivity to this point and anything he has done has been an almighty mess. He has to go now otherwise we risk losing all that was good that came from the past decade.

Act Now. These boys deserve better.

Anthony (He piggybacked on Lampard’s work at Chelsea too), Kilburn

Look, I know we’re all gutted about last night and our utter coward of a manager, and the third-place play-off is a bit depressing because no one really wants to be in it. But I think we’re missing the most important story here.

Kobbie Mainoo is now just one match away from completing the most flawless

World Cup

tournament ever by an

midfielder.

England v Argentina, a semi-final steeped in history for Buenos Aires

OffsAIde

Jude Bellingham clarifies Lionel Messi confrontation in England’s World Cup semi-final loss to Argentina

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Lionel Messi Gets 8.5/10 | Argentine Players Rated After They Beat England To Qualify For The FIFA World Cup 2026 Final

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