Thomas Tuchel emerges as clear England World Cup scapegoat, but who else can we blame? | OneFootball

The haters said Thomas Tuchel couldn’t do it. And they were correct. Honestly, great call from the haters.

But with widespread agreement that the chief scapegoat for England’s latest tournament exit is the manager brought in specifically to make sure we never again had to watch England spaff away a huge opportunity in the biggest games by desperately trying to sit for too long on a 1-0 lead and then producing the single most egregious Southgate+ example of the phenomenon known to man, a void emerges.

Sure, there’s a neatness to the emergence and identification of one across-the-board unanimous scapegoat. There’s something oddly unifying about every flavour of England fan from the most beard-stroking tactico to the most beer-throwing pub punter all landing on the same instant and furious conclusion.

We’re not even sure it was as clear cut as this with David Beckham in 1998.

But it also leaves us with a gnawing vacuum. A sense that something is missing. Sure, the main scapegoat and sacrificial lamb are key to any tournament-exit fallout. We must always obtain for you these animals.

A wider range of villains and fault-carriers must be secured, though. It’s too easy and above all too boring otherwise if everyone just agrees.

Here, then, is a short and non-exhaustive list of others who carry some small percentage of the blame for England’s latest World Cup heartbreak, even if the vast bulk does still rest on a manager doing the one thing he was brought in not to do, and the one thing he’d spent his whole time as England manager loudly insisting he would not do.

1. The players

Easy one. If you’re a glutton for punishment or, alternatively have a nine-year-old son who fell asleep at 1-0 and is also a glutton for punishment then you, like me, will have been blearily awake at bastard o’clock the morning after the night before watching the highlights of that sh*tshow of a second half.

And what is very obvious when you think about it but only really clear when watching the action back is that the players retreat first. Tuchel’s grave, terminal error was to do nothing about that and to then double down on it with every one of his tactical and substitution decisions, continuing to just sit there and think ‘This is fine’ as warning shot after warning shot passed unheeded.

The retreat didn’t come straight from the goal, either. Not quite, anyway. There’s a couple of minutes when England actually do try to continue playing the football that had got them to that point of relative control. But then comes the Argentina counter-attack that ends with that Djed Spence tackle.

And it was then, more than any other single moment, when England lost the game. That was the moment, even as Spence celebrated, that his team-mates collectively decided this was a bed that must be shat and must be shat right now. And continue to be shat and shat some more until the final whistle is blown and all that’s left is the most be-shat bed that was ever shat.

While the lesson learned from that moment could have been ‘Look, even when they carve us open completely, they still don’t have anyone with the pace to actually make it stick’, England’s players instead opted for ‘Well that was f**king terrifying, let’s have no more of that and just play 11 men behind the ball for 30 minutes – it worked against Mexico and there were only 10 of us that time’.

It was a fine plan, if one accepts the shaky notion that Raul Jimenez and the greatest footballer ever to walk the earth are basically the same thing.

None of that, of course, excuses Tuchel agreeing with the lads that it was a wizard scheme and, instead of spending the Hydration Break knocking heads together and telling them to play properly went ‘Great idea this, boys, I’ll bring on another defender for our goalscorer and fastest attacker, that’ll show ‘em.’

Especially maddening when the first three weeks of this tournament were basically a meme of Thomas Tuchel screaming at poor Djed any time he dared to play a sideways pass. What happened this time? Lost your voice, Thomas?

Kind of still ended up coming round to blaming Tuchel here, haven’t we? It really was mainly his fault.

2. Kane and Bellingham

Let’s get into specific players now, because that’s always fun. England’s two best players both disappeared entirely in that second half. We can argue all night about whether they were swallowed up by the cowardly consensus of their colleagues and boss or were the ringleaders or at least willing participants in it all, but at a time when Lionel Messi was determinedly starting to bend the match to his will, England’s talismanic figures were nowhere to be found.

Kane in particular, a veteran of so many of these precise occasions, should have been in full Captain, Leader, Legend mode and marching his players up the pitch. Instead he retreated deeper and deeper until he was just another centre-back heading crosses away.

We like deep-lying Kane. Playmaker Kane.  Quarterback Kane. Releasing speedy runners from midfield Kane. And we absolutely don’t mind ‘Very handy at defending corners in a kind of Drogba-adjacent way’ Kane. But pure auxiliary centre-back Kane? We do not care for that guy at all.

He did look absolutely spent – and we’ll be getting to England’s last-16 and quarter-final exertions in due course – but that’s in its own way just another criticism of everyone involved.

Even Gareth Southgate had worked out by the end of the last Euros that Kane, wonderful goalscorer and footballer that he undoubtedly is, can and indeed must be replaced by a lesser one if he is totally and visibly cooked.

Yes, we’re blaming Tuchel again on this one. Let’s try and not do that from now on. We have seen some suggestion that the failure to give Kane and Bellingham meaningful rest earlier in the tournament was a factor, so let’s just say this in Tuchel’s defence on that point: when, precisely, did England look comfortable enough to do that?

3. The conditions

It is what it is and it was what it was, but it’s not a completely unfair whinge to note that England had more travelling than any of the other top nations and had to play against Mexico and Norway back to back in very different but equally draining conditions.

We probably need the scienticians and boffins to give us the full details, but we’d tentatively suggest that in one order or other the Azteca altitude and Miami heat and humidity made those the first and second most exhausting and draining matches almost all England’s players had ever been involved in.

There really might not have been anything left in the tank to do anything different to the doomed Hail Mary rearguard they attempted.

4. Dan Burn

Embarrassing that England’s fourth-choice centre-back couldn’t conjure a goal out of thin air in five minutes playing as a lone striker.

5. Lionel Messi

Probably worth noting that he played quite a significant part in England’s downfall, didn’t he? It is a very English, very British, thing to deny the other team’s agency in these moments. A loss is always framed exclusively as what we did wrong and not what the other team did right, and while there was definitely a vast amount of self-inflicted silliness in the way England allowed a previously contained Messi to enjoy free rein in the final 40 or so minutes, it would be churlish not to acknowledge the extent to which the little genius forced himself upon the game. Again.

Sure, he is now largely a walking-football genius, and England decided to adopt an approach seemingly specifically designed to allow him to play walking football for 40 minutes in a genius fashion. But still – genius nonetheless.

6. The Falkland Islanders

Must these damn fools continue to provoke Argentina into inspired performances against England every 12 to 20 years by consistently and inexplicably insisting they want to remain British? Bigger picture, guys.

7. Mikel Arteta

Let us move swiftly to far safer ground, and ol’ Lego Head himself. How different, one cannot help but wonder, might this World Cup campaign have looked for England if he hadn’t spent last season completely and perhaps irrevocably breaking Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka like a massive technical-area-departing, title-winning idiot?

Rice has struggled all tournament long, most strikingly with his usually deadly set-pieces proving to be one of the biggest letdowns of the whole affair. It wasn’t the only thing that turned out to be very misleading from the Croatia game, but every single thing about Kane’s second goal that night is definitely up there.

Rice made four successful tackles. Not against Argentina – at the entire World Cup. Four. Four. Four tackles, Declan? Four? That’s insane. Lionel Messi has 10.

Yes, we know he was ill for some of the time and you might argue that isn’t really Arteta’s fault but to that we say: shut up. We’re still going to blame him, and Rice was nowhere near his magnificent best before and after he was ill anyway.

Saka, meanwhile, was just obviously, visibly never at all fit and reduced to a bit-part role in a position where, if he’d been anything like his best self, he could have dominated.

8. Kobbie Mainoo

Just how unfathomably sh*t must he have looked in training not to get a single kick in England’s midfield? Verily the mind doth boggle.