France to walk World Cup? Only a fool would bet against England | OneFootball

After 55 years of watching football, it still surprises me. Thomas Tuchel was right to say that England were lucky; we could have lost that match in so many scenarios. But we still persist in thinking we can predict a football match, perhaps encouraged in this belief by the increasingly predictable nature of the top-flight game, with its massive financial and resource imbalances, and the rise of statistical and tactical analysis promising steely insight.

We all started to follow football because at heart we didn’t know what was going to happen. As a game it constantly surprises us and that is a core driver of its appeal. The drift towards economic dominance of an elite has removed some of that but even now, unpredictability rears its head.

If you look back at the speculative tweets sent during England games, most prove to be wide of the mark or just plain wrong, even by our leading journalists. This isn’t because they’re stupid (though they might be), it’s because football at this level – in knock-out games especially – is just not predictable. As soon as you type ‘oh no Djed Spence’, he plays brilliantly; as soon as you even think ‘Haaland is bound to score’, he gets taken off.

I first realised that football can contradict your expectations and make the seemingly impossible absolutely possible in 1970 when I was nine and saw Hull City play Manchester United in the Watney Cup. I was sure Hull would get thrashed. They were in the second division and United had been European champions two years before.

But Hull scored first and United didn’t equalise until an hour later. This was amazing to me. How could it be happening? 34,000 of us saw it go to penalties (the first ever shoot-out); United won but Hull nearly did it.

So when it comes to the World Cup, who amongst us doesn’t think France will win it or that Argentina will beat England? But, as we’ve seen, there are so many potential variables. Yet still everyone speculates. Why do we do it? I was told at an early age by a gadgee on the Holgate at Middlesbrough’s Ayresome Park these words of wisdom: “The pitch is so green because there’s been so much shit on it and don’t make out you know anything because football makes fools of us all eventually.”

Those of us who thought England were not quite good enough this year are being made to look stupid, but that’s just football doing its thing. England seem to win by just playing average but having a couple of great moments.

England play too slow, turn inside, pass sideways and back all the time and defend nervously, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Thomas Tuchel, eyes moving like a painting on a wall in an episode of Scooby-Doo but with all the angular boniness of a Ray Harryhausen skeleton, was right on the money in being downbeat, pleased to be through but not fooling himself about the quality of the performance.

And in that he’s one of the most honest managers we’ve had; it reminded me of a less angry or brutal version of Alex Ferguson after Aberdeen had won the Scottish Cup.

My favourite part of the game was when Erling Haaland pushed Elliot Anderson and in the slow-motion replay, you could see there was a huge ‘Parmo Army’ banner behind the goal. Teessiders get everywhere. In a way, it felt quite symbolic, seeing all the flags with the names of the myriad small English towns spread out across the stadium like a football Doomsday book supporting a team as fractured as the flags.

In any cup competition the winner might not be the best team, and yet we constantly want to work out which is the best team. Who is it here? France? It guarantees nothing; they might have someone sent off against Spain and lose; Kylian Mbappe might get food poisoning. In a league season, teams have time to override such problems but not in cup competitions when we are into the final week.

It seems unlikely that England will get to the final and win but football is chaos and anything can happen. Anybody claiming to know exactly how this World Cup will pan out is a fool. Including you. And me.