On the face of it, the mission was clear: Win two games, a World Cup semifinal and final.
Since England’s last World Cup championship, in 1966, victories in big moments have proved so elusive that they represented something of a national block. Instead of a run to the tournament’s final game, England’s collective trauma will continue, heaping on more years of hurt to add to the country’s soccer anthem, “It’s Coming Home.”
To make the outcome even more painful, the team’s 2-1 defeat in the semifinal on Wednesday came against Argentina, a nation that is arguably England’s biggest World Cup rival. Their games are a collision of politics, culture and sports. For Argentina, beating England means more, and with a berth in the World Cup final at stake, it was hardly any surprise that the Argentine players stayed on the field after the game to commune with their mass of supporters behind the goal.
They sang about previous glories — victories over England — and the possibilities to come. England and its vanquished coach had long since disappeared.
For England, coach after coach has been unable to break this spell of heartbreak.
For this World Cup, England’s national soccer federation turned to Thomas Tuchel, a gangly German technician, to lead the team. Minutes from the glory of a place in the World Cup final, his players allowed Argentina and Lionel Messi to take their places, their late goals equalizing and then eliminating England’s initial 1-0 lead. Argentina will face Spain in the final on Sunday.
In two of the last three World Cups, England has faltered in the semifinals, failures that will only intensify what has become a national nightmare.
In British pubs on Wednesday night, hope for finally getting over the hump turned into the grim knowledge that it would be at least four more years before another chance would come.
The previous coach, Gareth Southgate, had gotten England tantalizingly close to its goal. In his eight-year run in the role, he lifted belief in the team and turned himself into someone more akin to the voice of a fractured nation.
Still, he could not get England over the line. And for Tuchel, hired at great expense in 2025, there was one big job. And he knew it, too.
The players were masters of their own downfall in a way familiar to England’s teams of the past, despite their new German coach. Defending a one-goal lead, the English team defended deeper and deeper into their own territory until the walls caved in.
“There was blood in the water and we went for it,” Argentina’s coach, Lionel Scaloni, said at a postgame news conference.
And yet it was somehow inevitable that Messi would have the final say. As the minutes appeared to be ticking down on his World Cup career, the 39-year-old Messi, perhaps the game’s greatest player, assisted both Argentine goals.
After the final whistle, Argentine players held up a banner claiming sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas. Argentina has disputed Britain’s sovereignty over the islands that have been under British rule for about 200 years.
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