Thomas Tuchel Reflects on England's World Cup Semi-Final Loss
Thomas Tuchel leans into the question before it’s even asked.
"You can try to kill me here. But it's my scar, it's not your scar."
England’s head coach is back in the moment that will follow him for the rest of his career: a World Cup semi-final, 1-0 up on Argentina, five minutes plus stoppage time from a first final since 1966 – and a switch to a back five that ended with the Three Lions on the floor.
Enzo Fernandez. Lautaro Martinez. Game flipped. Dream gone.
Tuchel knows exactly where the fingers are pointing. At his substitutions. At his shape. At his timing.
"I have to live with it. It's not you having to live with this. I'm in charge here and I take these decisions," he says in an England documentary, revisiting the night. "No-one is more hurt than me, no-one wanted it more. They can endlessly torture you and think: if I had done different substitutions, then we would have won the match. You just don't know it."
The tackle that changed everything
The story, in Tuchel’s mind, doesn’t start with a substitution. It starts with a tackle.
Anthony Gordon had fired England in front. Declan Rice and Harry Kane both had chances to stretch the lead. England looked alive, sharp, in control of their own history.
Then Argentina broke.
Giuliano Simeone burst through, one-on-one with Jordan Pickford in waiting, until Djed Spence came sliding in with a desperate, match-saving challenge. It was the sort of tackle that gets clipped up and replayed for years. For Tuchel, it was something else entirely.
"We did quite well in the first half, it was totally an even match," he reflects. "We had good ball possession moments. I was actually happy and I saw us growing into this match. I felt we were there.
"From the start of the second half, I felt us on the back foot. I felt Argentina were more liberated and free in their movements, finding better solutions. Then we score, we have the next chance straight away.
"We go after them, we have a ball win, we have a chance, we have another half chance, we lose the ball in another attack and it's the Spence tackle and they almost score from a counter-attack.
"It did something to me, it maybe did something to the players. And we suddenly shift into a mindset of: 'let's just overcome it'. We played like there were four minutes left, rather than 30."
The technical detail still eats at him. England stopped doing the things that had given them control.
"From executions, the details of execution, playing around in deep build-up, playing around Messi, playing to one side then switching the side, bringing the game in the opponent's half, making them suffer, having time to recover physically and mentally in ball possession, we were lacking all these things."
‘We will not survive this’
The pressure kept rising. Argentina threw more bodies forward, more chaos into the game. England’s grip loosened.
A huge Pickford save from Nicolas Gonzalez, just before the final water break, became the tipping point. Tuchel looked at his team and saw a side hanging on.
"Argentina then play very, very quickly. Sorry for the language, [they played] f*** it football. 'We have nothing to lose. Let's f*** it,'" he says.
"They played four strikers. They played two wingers, the two strikers and Messi. They took a No 6 off and put a No 10 in. A central defender off and played a No 6. At some points they played 3-1-6. And we struggled."
Then came the thought he can still quote word for word.
"A key moment if I look back at it and what happened to my decision-making, we conceded a big, big chance right before the water break. And I thought: we will not survive. This is waiting for death. We don't have ball possession, we're not defending good, we're not defending properly in our 4-4-2. We need help.
"I wanted to give the players something: this is what we do. This is what we do now."
So Gordon, the goalscorer, came off. Ezri Konsa came on. England dropped into a back five. First a 5-3-2, then a 5-4-1.
"Coming with this mindset and this experience, we ended the game against Norway in a back five. We ended the match against Mexico in a back five. And we did it," Tuchel says.
"I thought Argentina relied heavily on crosses, they have four strikers in the last line. I think: let's play in a back five.
"I changed to a 5-3-2, we changed the structure. Because I believe we can handle the width better and we still have three central defenders in the middle if crosses still fly in. We changed then to a 5-4-1. Even my mindset is maybe like: let's just overcome it. And it's too early. Too early for that mindset."
The storm didn’t ease. Alexis Mac Allister rattled the woodwork. The equaliser and the winner followed. England never found their way back.
A tournament that emptied England’s tank
Tuchel doesn’t hide from the possibility he shut up shop too soon. He admits it. But he insists the decision came from a team running on fumes.
The route to that semi-final had taken a toll.
"It just piles up through the tournament," he says. "Congo, 70 minutes trailing 1-0, Mexico the altitude, flying to Miami and playing against Norway. We are tired. And still we hang on until the 88th minute."
That fatigue fed into his instinct to protect, not to chase a second goal with fresh attackers.
Asked whether he could have gone the other way, pushed harder up the pitch, he doesn’t duck it.
"Of course you could. No-one knows what would have happened. We could have done it and maybe lost 2-1 and could have gone: 'Is he crazy? He finished the game against Norway with a back five, why didn't finish the game of with five?'"
For Tuchel, Argentina’s relentless attacking changes demanded a structural answer, not a romantic one.
"I think from what I saw and the experience, the information and the level of craziness from Argentina put in – change after change after change, it was just one offensive change after the other. That was my solution to the problem.
"That's what the intervention of a coach is. I try to help, you don't implement anything for your ego or whatever. You just try to help."
He circles back again to the same hinge point: England’s use of the ball. Or rather, their loss of it.
"If we would have been more stable in the game, with more percentage of ball possession, I would have not changed the structure, why would I? And I would have gone for offensive changes. But that is a very, very difficult road to have gone down. That can torture you."
The torture, clearly, has already begun. The scar, as he calls it, isn’t going anywhere. The real question now is whether England – and their manager – can carry it into the next tournament without letting it define them.
