England’s World Cup campaign ended with a semi-final defeat to Argentina, and the immediate verdict has been that Thomas Tuchel failed to do the job he was hired for. Writing about the aftermath, Barney Ronay argues that conclusion is too simple. The failure was not caused by Tuchel alone. It was an omission, not an act of managerial fraud, and the system around England remains the bigger obstacle.
The key passage came in the semi-final itself. England played well until Anthony Gordon scored the opening goal on 55 minutes. After that, the players stopped. They retreated into hacked clearances, deep defence and desperation measures. For 17 minutes they did not do what Tuchel wanted, trapped in their own vertigo and swamped by Argentina’s surge football and the conviction of having a genius in their ranks. Tuchel tried to urge them forward, but then chose to lean into what he had, probably based on winning that way in the previous two games. England got to within five normal-time minutes of the World Cup final. The failure was one of omission: Tuchel did not cause it, but he also did not stop it.
The standard analysis asks why England did not go forward from about the 72nd minute and why Tuchel made defensive substitutions. Ronay points out that this was already happening. The sorrowful 18-minute spell often discussed was actually a 40-minute spell. The deeper issue is what international football is for. A World Cup is an examination of an entire sporting culture. Victory rewards decisions made at structural and economic levels, and nations with coaching cultures win things. England cannot shortcut that by buying a world-class coach.
Ronay also notes that there have been 22 World Cup-winning managers, from 1930 to 2026, and all 22 have been the same nationality as their players. Winning as a foreign manager of a national team may even be impossible, history suggests. That makes the idea Tuchel was appointed solely to win tournaments look absurd, especially given the difficulty of winning a World Cup with a nation that comes pre-cooked with hangups and uncertainties.
The alternative is not straightforward. If England sack Tuchel and go English, the names available include Graham Potter, Eddie Howe, Gary O’Neil, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Liam Rosenior and Will Still. There is no identifiable English way of playing and no English coaching school. The Premier League, Ronay argues, is a portmanteau culture of borrowed influences. Tuchel was polite and evasive when asked why he did not just make the players better at keeping and passing the ball. What he wants to say is: give me a Vinícius, a Rodri, an Antoine Griezmann, and then we will talk.
Other summer questions remain. Why did Tuchel not pick a squad that could have played more adaptively? Why did he not take Cole Palmer? Where is Palmer now, and how is the load management going? Phil Foden is now up to 37 games without a goal. Perhaps Adam Wharton of Crystal Palace might have changed everything, but Ronay asks whether anyone else in elite football thinks that could be the case.
There were positives. England were good in parts. They showed spirit to reach the semi. They beat the hosts in Mexico City with 10 men because the manager reorganised on the hoof. They got the best out of Jude Bellingham. Harry Kane faded, as he does, but his most likely replacement is now playing in Saudi Arabia. They got to five minutes from beating the holders and reaching a first final outside England. That is something to learn from, for Tuchel as much as anyone else.
Euro 2028 now offers the best chance England will get any time soon to win something. Home advantage, good players, and a very good manager, or at least the best one they are going to get at this point. The biggest obstacle is not the team or the manager but the energy around them, a reaction to Tuchel that is itself an example of why England fail. Tuchel has no space to breathe from here and no real margin for error. England do have a pretty good chance of winning something two years from now. The task will be to separate the job from its expectations, something that shows no signs of becoming any easier with time.