"What the f*** are you doing?" - Paul Scholes admits he "hated" what Harry Kane did vs Argentina | OneFootball

Former Manchester United and England star Paul Scholes has slammed Harry Kane for dropping into midfield in the World Cup semi-final defeat against Argentina.

Kane is England’s all-time leading scorer at World Cups, as well as in all competitions in the national team’s history, but he also tends to like dropping deep to dictate play.

On this occasion, it looked like the wrong choice as Scholes felt he was trying to do too much, and it would have annoyed him as a midfielder.

“If I keep seeing my centre-forward almost coming behind me half the time, I’d hate that. I want my centre-forward to play centre-forward. I think it’s also a leadership thing from midfield,” Scholes said on The Good, The Bad, and The Football Podcast.

“If me or Nicky, or me and Roy [Keane], or whoever it is as a midfield player, we’d say: ‘What the f— are you doing?’ That’s up to Elliot Anderson and Declan Rice; they should be saying: ‘Get out of here, we need you up there.’”

What Harry Kane said about England’s World Cup defeat

Kane himself has addressed the issues in this England squad after the pain of losing 2-1 to Argentina on Wednesday night.

Anthony Gordon had given the Three Lions a 1-0 lead, but two late goals from Enzo Fernandez and Lautaro Martinez turned the game around.

Argentina will now be in the final against Spain, and there’ll likely be plenty of people looking for last minute World Cup final tickets for what should be a great spectacle, even if it’s a shame England won’t be in it.

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Discussing what went wrong, Kane said: “We were close, really close to another final but it wasn’t enough. We’ve given everything over these last seven weeks and to fall short is hard to take!

“I know the expectations are high and rightly so, we’ve been knocking on the door for eight years now but again are missing that final piece of the jigsaw! That’s where we have to go away, process it and find a way to get better.”

Is Thomas Tuchel the biggest problem for England?

While Kane may have had some criticism from Scholes and others, there’s no doubt that the main man feeling the heat at the moment will be England manager Thomas Tuchel.

The German tactician has defended his tactics, but he seemed to get it badly wrong by going so defensive with so much time left against Argentina.

Tuchel notably subbed Gordon off for Ezri Konsa, and there have been reports of England’s players being unhappy with his negative approach towards the end of the game.

Former England coach Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink says he feels this wouldn’t have happened under previous manager Gareth Southgate.

“We’re talking after the game, and it’s easy, you know, but I don’t think that Gareth would have gone to a back five. I don’t think that he would have gone to it with 20, 25 minutes before the game finishes,” Hasselbaink said.

“I don’t think that Steve Holland would have liked him to do that. The reason why I think that is when they played Italy, they played a five; they had difficulties getting out and all that kind of stuff. I think that he would have kept it at a four.

“I think he would have changed the wide players and still had energy up front so that he could still press from the front and still be able to get behind their defence.”