"You can kill me here" — Tuchel breaks silence on the tactical collapse against Argentina
Two months later, England's World Cup heartbreak is still haunting Thomas Tuchel.
Details: The England head coach has returned in detail to the 2-1 World Cup semi-final defeat to Argentina, explaining the tactical chaos that ultimately overwhelmed his team. Tuchel admitted that after Argentina seized the initiative, his own mindset shifted too early towards simply surviving the remaining minutes.
Tuchel did not hide how deeply the defeat affected him and gave a detailed account of what went wrong:
“You can try to kill me here. But it's my scar, it's not your scar. I have to live with it. It's not you having to live with this. I'm in charge here and I take these decisions. No-one is more hurt than me, no-one wanted it more. They can endlessly torture you and think: if I had done different substitutions, then we would have won the match. You just don't know it.
From the start of the second half, I felt us on the back foot. I felt Argentina were more liberated and free in their movements, finding better solutions. Then we score, we have the next chance straight away.
But it was the Spence tackle, it did something to me, it maybe did something to the players. And we suddenly shift into a mindset of: 'let's just overcome it'. We played like there were four minutes left, rather than 30.
From executions, the details of execution, playing around in deep build-up, playing around Messi, playing to one side then switching the side, bringing the game in the opponent's half, making them suffer, having time to recover physically and mentally in ball possession, we were lacking all these things.
A key moment if I look back at it and what happened to my decision-making, we conceded a big, big chance right before the water break. And I thought: we will not survive. This is waiting for death. We don't have ball possession, we're not defending good, we're not defending properly in our 4-4-2. We need help.
I changed to a 5-3-2, we changed the structure. Because I believe we can handle the width better and we still have three central defenders in the middle if crosses still fly in. We changed then to a 5-4-1. Even my mindset is maybe like: let's just overcome it. And it's too early. Too early for that mindset.”
It is worth noting that the semi-final on July 15 ended 2-1 to Argentina: Enzo Fernández and Lautaro Martínez turned the match around after Anthony Gordon had put England ahead.
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Steven Perez
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