England failed at World Cup through ‘sentiment, reputation and fear’ | OneFootball

Yes we are still talking about England’s failure at the World Cup a week later. But also Spain, Man City, Arsenal and more.

Send your thoughts on any subject to theeditor@football365.com. Maybe read this first.

Bravery > marginal gains at World Cup

Modern-day sports management has become all about marginal gains. Football at the top level has become so competitive and the difference between players so finite in many instances – not surprising when all players have come through some academy or another and the coaching has become almost factory-like.

Teams have therefore continuously resorted to finding the next innovation that can help give them the extra 1-2% over their opponents. We’ve seen it with the use of data analysis, where performance analysts are hired to track everything that occurs during training as well as live in-match analysis to help coaches make the necessary decisions. There are also teams set up just to analyze upcoming opponents to spot any weaknesses that could be exploited.

We’ve all become familiar with teams having throw-in coaches, corner-kick coaches and set-piece coaches. This is before we get to sleep specialists, recovery specialists, injury prevention specialists, nutritionists and cognitive training specialists. Sports psychologists are now a given for most teams as they’ve moved on to the mental side, seeing as how there’s a limit to the physical gains to be gotten from training.

This is before we even come to the murkier side of marginal gains with illegal scouting of opponents (Southampton), so-called technical reports on referees (Barcelona), and the alleged doping and blood cycling in Serie A in the 90s.

All this is a roundabout way to say that even with all this money and effort spent for these miniscule gains, teams are still at the mercy of managers and players who choose to ignore all this and make selfish or senseless decisions.

Let’s use England as an example – would a 50% fit John Stones really be better than a 100% fit Konsa, Burn or even Maguire? You’re expecting someone who played 86 minutes (!) of Premier League football in 2026 to work his way into form and fitness during what is essentially the biggest football tournament on earth. Same goes for the patently unfit and/or injury-prone players –eg: Saka and James, who true to form proved unable to perform for 90 minutes and/or promptly got injured. Is the disruption to the starting line-up and team cohesion really worth it to have these players over other more in-form and fit teammates?

While other coaches have been brave enough to make changes and/or leave out players completely, England seem to be in thrall to certain names, regardless of the plain facts staring them in the face. Belgium left de Bruyne on the bench for their Round of 16 clash with the USA. Rudi Garcia also had the smarts to use a recovering Lukaku as an impact sub to great effect, bringing him on late in games against tiring defenses that he could bully. You could never imagine England leaving their two biggest name players on the bench when they could flog them for 90 minutes every game.

Even Spain were not afraid to make changes, taking off their top scorer Oyarzabal (5 goals) and bringing on Torres (0 goals up to that point) in the finals. de La Fuente even took off Golden Ball winner Rodri in extra-time, with the game still finely balanced at 0-0.

Contrast this with a dead on his feet Kane hoofing the ball to no one in particular against Argentina, with Tuchel unable/unwilling to remove his captain, much to the detriment of his team. Did Kane really need to play 83 minutes against Panama when any one of Watkins or Rashford could have taken his place earlier? At least they’d have some practice in their legs, rather than being asked to rescue England with 3 minutes remaining in their first appearance of the tournament, as was Toney’s lot?

Some of this also has to fall on the players and their huge egos, believing themselves to be so much better than their own teammates, that they’re convinced the team would fall to pieces if they did not play. Could a clearly unfit and quite literally shitting himself Declan Rice not have removed himself from selection, seeing as his coach was clearly a coward who did not trust the other players he himself selected for the squad?

If you are serious about wanting to win the World Cup, you’d think that would be the obvious thing to do. Or is your ego so big that that vision is only worth persisting with if you’re on the pitch every minute of every game, performance and ability be damned? I’m sure even a broken-armed Jordan Henderson would have been able to clear the first man with his corner kicks against Norway, never mind a fully-fit Kobbie Mainoo.

Forget all the talk about team unity and togetherness, when push comes to shove, it’s clearly all about the individual glory, rather than what’s best for the team. That, or cowardice by the coach.

Another example of this was the 1998 World Cup final, when despite reportedly suffering a seizure just hours before the final, a clearly unfit Ronaldo started the match and was literally a shadow of himself for 73 minutes before being replaced by Edmundo. Edmundo had 20 touches in his 17 minutes on the field, the same amount as Ronaldo had in his prior 73 minutes. By that point however, Brazil were already 2-0 down and would go on to lose to France.

Loyalty to certain players because they played for you during the qualifying rounds is also only useful if said players have maintained form and fitness. An example of this would be Toto Schillaci, who came from nowhere to help Italy to reach the finals of the 1990 World Cup. He played exactly one friendly game for Italy before the tournament, but his form for Juventus, where he scored 21 goals and helped them win the Coppa Italia and UEFA Cup earned his a spot on the team. He proceeded to score 6 goals at the World Cup, earning both the Golden Boot and Golden Ball.

In the end, football’s strides towards marginal gains are only useful if the biggest decisions are also the smartest ones. There is little value in employing armies of analysts, psychologists and specialist coaches to squeeze out an extra one or two percent, only to throw those gains away through sentiment, reputation or fear of making difficult choices. History consistently rewards coaches who trust form over reputation, pick the fittest players rather than the biggest names, and put the team above the individual.

The World Cup is not the place for players to rediscover fitness or form—it is where the sharpest and most deserving should play. Perhaps the greatest marginal gain in elite football isn’t found in technology or sports science at all, but in having the courage to leave an unfit superstar on the bench. Sanjit (if you’re not first you’re last) Randhawa, Kuala Lumpur

Change your nationality if you deride Rice and Tuchel

I just read that ‘England will never win anything with Rice in midfield’, and that he’s a better right back. I guess no one told Arteta, or the combined journalists of England, all of whom had him on the shortlist for player of the year. To the author of that uniquely stupid comment: please change your nationality.

I also heard via Simon whatshischops on Sport Talk that Tuchel should be fired, given he coached a bad twenty minutes over the course of 720 minutes, plus of course a perfect qualifying record. Tuchel has now, if I’m correct, lost exactly one competitive fixture as England coach (I don’t like ‘manager’ for him, this man puts out the cones).

In his first tournament, Tuchel has taken us higher than anyone since Alf Ramsey. He wasn’t ‘hired for the big moments’ as whatshischops and other morons are spouting, he was hired to get us into semi-finals and finals. He did the first: the players ballsed it up through a combination of sheer exhaustion, ongoing injuries to key players, a lunatic travel schedule, and not sticking to the game plan. Simon whatshischops: please change your nationality.

Tuchel has completely changed the landscape for the England national team. Here is a man who makes difficult choices, leaves out players most of us would start, but has shown that he can get us to the place where we need the following: players fit and in form; understanding the strategy; a lot of luck. If you are one of those English people who are so self-entitled that you honestly believe we were going to beat Argentina, Spain and France in this tournament… please change your nationality. You are a disgrace to the flag of Saint George. Marcus Davidson

An alternative to penalty shoot-outs

I wonder if it is time to end Penalty Shootouts? I’m sure there is a sizable proportion who enjoy the drama but one unintended consequence is that as teams have become fitter and better coached, it seems like some teams are playing for this outcome right from the kick-off. It’s only a matter of time before a team wins a tournament without even scoring a goal. To me, the crap shoot of a Penalty Shootout isn’t much better than the good ol’ coin toss that it replaced. At least then, players who missed weren’t vilified.

While “Golden Goal” came and went (it could have dragged on for ages), other more outlandish ideas, such as reducing players, or the American inspired run from the halfway line, still don’t address the key issue – none of these ideas reward the team that tried harder to win.

I think I have come up with a simple and elegant solution – Goalkeeper touches! While a common metric these days “Shots on Target” is still too subjective (was it deflected?, was it going wide?) a “Snicko” chip into the Goalkeeper’s gloves would accurately count if the Goalkeeper touched the ball or not.

Now picture the scenario where one team is behind by this measure with 15 minutes to go. Their response will inevitably be more shots on goal. Isn’t that what we all want? The tactic of “parking the bus” will no longer be a route to success. Adidasmufc

(I would be curious to know what percentage of people actually enjoy the Penalty Shootouts!)

If Spain is the future, I hope football dies

Before this week is over and this e-mail makes no longer any sense sharing, I felt compelled to drop my two cents regarding the newly minted World Champions and that monstrous, eye sore of a final served last Sunday.

I want to say bluntly that if Spain is the model, then football will die and deservedly so. The beauty of the world’s game is rendered void by this insipid tiki-taka style of very disciplined positional players from a tactical point of view but who provide nothing in terms of inspiration, individual prowess or excitement.

That was a World Cup Final last Sunday, it felt like a glorified friendly…. Compare to the atmosphere on THAT England-Argentina match where Argentina fans were so loudly singing battlecries against their transatlantic enemy you couldn’t even hear the English National Anthem from loudspeakers!! (That’s the crazed atmosphere which made the World Cup the stuff of legends!) Even with a terrible first half, you knew the players would provide electricity in the second!!

Meanwhile Spain’s model is to suck the life out of the opposition and fans altogether with their stale, uninspired, possession-based football where the ball runs but players don’t, playing without a number 9, without punch or bite, always shifting from side to side with 300 useless passes among themselves hoping to find or create an opening in the defense, boring everyone to death and beyond…. In this model, only center backs and central midfielders like Rodri or Pedri are allowed to progress forward with the ball, everyone else must stick to the script of playing one-touch (two, at most) like ballerinas performing an established choreography, hardly an imperfect game like football made beautiful exactly by virtue of its unpredictability and intensity.

There is zero individual agency in this Spain except for Lamine Yamal, the unicorn in the team who is allowed freedom to create something (Jesus Christ, for once…) and maybe Nico Williams, to a lesser extent, if he plays at all. But of course, Lamine goes on and pulls off a stinker. And Rodri MVP, 0 goals and 0 assists MVP over Messi, 8 goals and 4 assists right??? Aren’t they laughing out loud at all of us???

If this is football then i don’t want anything to do with this stale bulls*** moving forward. Furthermore, unless a team deciphers how to neutralize this cancerous footballing style, football may die as the world’s greatest spectacle. There was nothing of worth to show for 120 minutes of vapid, repeated, “here we go again” choreographed movements on the pitch last Sunday; only bots on the pitch who had sucked the life of the sport altogether.

And you could see it in the final whistle; Spain players didn’t even know how to celebrate. They too had become robotic, rendered humble cogs in a machinery, unable to inspire anything the beautiful game has inspired generations before. For people with chronic sleeping problems, I guarantee they couldn’t endure this miserable match without descending into slumberland. I myself crashed in my couch at half time. IN A WORLD CUP FINAL…. 😱

I said what I wanted to say, and would like to sign off by paying homage to Kevin Keegan, who just passed away days ago. One of the greatest ever LFC and European players of all time. 323 matches and 100 goals for Liverpool speak for itself! The only two-time English Ballon D’Or Winner. Players like him should be celebrated more often in life rather than only remembered come their deaths. He’s one of the reasons why Liverpool is a giant of the game. RIP Mighty Mouse. Raúl H. García (We should have gotten LFC legend Xabi Alonso, why the hell Iraola??? 🤦‍♂️​) Liverpool Football Club, YNWA-1892

Not everybody agrees about Spain

Well then, that was that. Thank you Rodri, for saving our sport.

Whatever Argentina maybe, you have to admire that there never was, and probably never will be, another team that could play villains that effectively. It felt like more than half the world was united in supporting Spain. We even got Palestine account celebrating their Victory. While we will go on hating clubs and their managers once the season starts, this was something else entirely. Dirty underhanded tactics mixed with perceived (by almost everyone except Messi fans)corruption and favouritism, the final felt like some movie or anime script. The team playing real football defeating the Antagonists. You can hate Oil clubs, Arteta ball, Corners, Real Madrid stealing players and Chelsea spending billions on random players, but this version of Argentina trumped all that. Even most neutrals didn’t hate prime haramball Atletico this way.

All I can say, is yeah, I will miss this Hatewatch passion next world cup . Perhaps for that, I will concede, they were the goats in being despised . Like that Dolores umbridge character, it ain’t easy to be this loathed by half the globe for your antics. Perhaps in 20 years, when some kids will Hatewatch some arrogant midfielder, I will pop in to say, yeah..but this guy is a wimp compared to the great Enzo Fernandez. Victor MCFC

On the World Cup pundits

Re the recent article about pundits being shite at the WC, +1 for Duncan Ferguson. Sum total seemed to be him suggesting players “get involved”, like that numpty down the pub using the phrase when referring to the act of having a tot and a chinwag. You can tell him though, I’ve heard he’s quite handy. RHT/TS x

(You’re probably gonna have to buy elite attackers unfamiliar with your ‘style’ Mikel, game’s up for anyone who’s seen your team play – just ask Morgan)

…I loved your piece on pundits who let you down. This was especially good: “The BBC should have just let him keep his spot on the sofa looking chiselled and wearing pleasing knitwear items while never actually asking him to speak or contribute. That way everyone would be happy. Including, we suspect, Olivier.”

I think we need to get back to putting pretty people in their place when they lack a personality or else we go down the path of having morons lecture us from television studios how everything is so smart and the morons leading us aren’t actually morons at all. Can you do a woman next to be fair and balanced? Niall, Annapolis

(Not sure why we have to denigrate a woman to be fair and balanced. That’s not how equal rights work – Ed)

BBC v ITV is a nonsense (says man in Canada)

Why are F365, and many other outlets still trying to make this out to be something the general public gives a shit about? Because in my experience they do not care at all.

Sure, the BBC and ITV will care about ratings, but given that they don’t show the same games until the later stages it is never really an apples v apples comparison until then, and I would guess the BBC would win anyway if their was a choice as British people would avoid the adverts.

But until the point that they are showing the games simultaneously, people will just choose whichever channel is showing the games they are interested in, so there is no debate.

But the media have been making a big deal of this for content (or what ever content was called before content became a thing) ad infinitum / ad nauseam since day one. Trying to stir things up because ‘fans express outrage at the BBC / ITV’ which means two nobodies on X who have nothing better to do, is purely for clicks.

Just be grateful you have two solid broadcasters in the UK providing you with the coverage you want. It’s a whole lot better than the shite we get here in Canada, to the extent that I watch the BBC / ITV streaming rather than the local bullshit.

If you don’t like the pre, halftime and post match punditry don’t fucking watch it, then you wouldn’t have to bitch about it like Donny Trump yelling at the clouds about rigged elections! A, LFC, Montreal

And still we wait for Man City punishment

The Premier League fixtures are out. Fans are arguing over opening-day predictions. Managers are insisting they’re “taking it one game at a time.” Pundits are confidently declaring that this is finally Arsenal’s year…. oh, wait.

And, like clockwork, Manchester City’s 115 charges have quietly rolled over into yet another season without a verdict.

At this point, the case has been running so long that some of the academy players weren’t born when the alleged breaches began.

Perhaps there are perfectly innocent explanations for the delay. Maybe every lever-arch file was accidentally stored behind Pep Guardiola’s tactical notebook and nobody wants to interrupt him.

Perhaps the legal team has become trapped in a room where every contract leads to another contract, every email references another email, and somewhere at the centre of the maze sits an accountant whispering, “Just one more sponsorship agreement…”

Maybe VAR has been asked to review the evidence.

Maybe the prosecution submitted the paperwork in Comic Sans and everyone agreed it would undermine the integrity of the process.

Perhaps they’re waiting for archaeologists to carbon-date the invoices.

Or NASA has borrowed the financial records because they’re convinced they contain evidence of previously undiscovered dimensions.

There’s every chance the charges are now being translated into ancient Sumerian before being interpreted by monks on a remote Himalayan mountain.

Perhaps the hearing can only proceed once Mercury leaves retrograde.

Or maybe the entire case has accidentally been uploaded to Microsoft’s cloud, where it’s currently “syncing.”

There is, of course, a more serious explanation.

Cases involving hundreds of alleged breaches of financial regulations, stretching across multiple seasons and jurisdictions, are genuinely complex. They involve vast quantities of documentation, legal argument, forensic accounting and procedural safeguards. Every club deserves due process, regardless of reputation or league position. Justice rushed is rarely justice served.

But that’s only part of the story.

Because while the legal complexity may explain the length of the process, it doesn’t explain the optics.

Every new season that begins without resolution chips away at public confidence. The Premier League markets itself as the most competitive competition in world football, yet one of its biggest financial investigations appears to exist in a state of permanent suspension.

Supporters are left asking the obvious question: if the allegations are serious enough to bring, why does it feel impossible to conclude them?

That perception becomes even harder to ignore when compared with the speed and severity experienced by other clubs.

Everton and Nottingham Forest were sanctioned during the season under Profit and Sustainability Rules. Leicester faced proceedings. Smaller clubs throughout the pyramid have suffered transfer embargoes, points deductions and financial restrictions that dramatically affected their campaigns.

Whether those punishments were right or wrong isn’t really the point.

The point is consistency.

Football cannot operate with one speed of justice for the super-rich and another for everyone else.

When clubs without unlimited legal resources are punished swiftly, while the most successful and best-funded club in England enters yet another title race under the shadow of unresolved allegations, supporters inevitably begin asking whether influence, wealth and political relationships buy something money officially can’t: time.

Nobody outside the hearing room knows whether Manchester City will ultimately be cleared or found liable. That is exactly why the case needs to reach its conclusion.

Because justice isn’t measured only by the final verdict.

It’s measured by whether every club, regardless of size, wealth or connections, appears to be playing under exactly the same rules.

Right now, that’s the part many supporters are struggling to believe. Mr B. Ingo. B.Ongo

Sour grapes and schadenfreude with Rogers

As you might expect, I am inclined to believe the reports that while Arsenal were willing to cough-up £80M for Morgan Rogers, £117M was too steep. A position I would heartily endorse. But if that is the case, I do wonder if Morgan is a little bit miffed at having to go to Chelsea, despite presumably getting a bigger salary. That might explain his unnecessarily spiky “biggest club in London” jibe.