2026 WC USA (et al): Worldwide Opponents Watch [all R's]

I have seen some, like the Stick to Football Guys, saying that Argentina was actually tilting the match strongly towards them throughout the second half before the England goal, so in a sense, Tuchel did need to do something, but what he did just murdered any chance they had, even if it was five minutes from time, there was always going to be at least 7 minutes if not more of ET, so it was really what, 12-15 minutes of time they'd still have to hold and Argentina was at that point seemingly in my memory generating chances every 2-4 minutes, so I would have been shocked if they didn't produce another 3-6 big chances before the whistle and the truth is, they did: they hit the Post TWICE, not including the two goals scored, and Pickford had another two saves, and a distance shot went just over the cross bar.

You simply couldn't sit on the lead like they did and survive, they had to make Argentina honor the threat of their attackers, but Tuechel wouldn't bring them on until it was too late, and again, some were left at home too (including some of the best options for opening up the width issues Argentina had).

It was just stupid. The draw alone should have told Tuechel it would be a good idea to bring on more attacking talent from the wings to his roster for the cup, because England should have been planning on dealing with Colombia, or Argentina, and Brazil or Norway before a Final, you can't leave all those guys at home and/or the few you did bring on the bench. It was insanity. Regardless of what ended up playing out.

And lets be straight here: They were crap against Ghana, and Panama, and should have lost to Ghana, they were outplayed against DR Congo for much of the match and w/o a Kane masterclass, could have lost that, they struggled with El Tri, and needed the refs and maybe a wire to beat Norway.

They sucked virtually the entire tournament, so whatever the wisdom of his choices, in roster design and approach, it wasn't, actually working, to begin with. They were making hard work, consistently of vastly inferior to distinctly inferior sides in literally every single ----ing game.

 

I read this whole thing another way. I think Tuchel did what he could and England was just gassed. From Azteca and Miami, they couldn’t go anymore. They were done with 30 minutes left, no matter what Tuchel did.

England pressed Argentina after Gordan’s goal. Argentina just pushed them back slowly and permanently. What was Marcus Rashford going to do if he got subbed on?

 

I wish you had told me lol, I was flop sweating the final minutes because I was winning big if it went to ET or Penalties. Whoops.

 

The Athletic, which is not prone to hysteria IMO, has been politely tearing Tuchel a new one.

 

Here we go regarding Tuchel. Have a listen:

Diversity of Andros Townsend's TikTok is phenomenal (good vid though tbf) pic.twitter.com/9GeeimBKyB

— Charlie (@CharlieBarnicle) July 16, 2026

 

I grew up in Italy. Some of my first memories are from the 70’s. Any kind of a ball would do, and any gathering of kids would become a pickup game. Church door could be the goal until the priest got pissed off, or else some shirts on the ground for posts. Not good enough? You don’t get picked. Little kid goes in goal.
You would get in fights with kids from the next street over.
This is gone now. There are so few kids, and they are raised like veals

 

Interesting. If I remember Argentina's 1st goal correctly, Messi had it wide right, and 3 English players started to converge on him, and he simply dished to Enzo who was wide open. I think that's just a mental error on the players and a lack of communication. I doubt that tuchels instructions were to triple team Messi.

That said, it does some silly that tuchel made defensive subs too early when the issue was that England were already too far back.

I think the only conclusion you can reach is that everyone, from the coach to the players, s*** the bed. But credit to Argentina for staying on the front foot and ruthlessly capitalising on their opportunities.

 

I'm gonna have to watch the Final at JFK. I have a perfect window of time, so it should be more than doable and really interesting. The only bugaboo is if it goes to penalties, I'm sure it would overlap with boarding. We'll see though.

 

That what his personality is.There were plenty of chess players who didn't mind to defend for long time. And there are soccer teams like that as well, of course. Both Short and England are fragile.

 

I'll always take Argentinians over pretensious English pricks. Both players and fans.

 

Nothing I've said about England exculpates Argentina's players or their fans. I view their players at least of this current side, as tough, fearsome, fantastic soccer players, who behave on the field like contemptible vile pieces of excrement. The fans I hold generally in even greater contempt, the absolute hypocrisy of the media and the fandom in how they ceaselessly ---- all over Messi for a decade when Argentina failed to win WC '10, '14 or '18, and Copa America '11, '15, '16 and '19, and suddenly, Messi is the GOAT, and on and on and on......They were so freaking horrible to Messi that he literally hung up his cleats after the Copa America Centenario a decade ago. Eventually he was coaxed back (and considering how awful WC '18 went, it's kind of amazing he stuck around for the following two tournaments)....

So I love the singing, and the passion, I loathe the hypocrisy, hubris, and racism, and the contemptible behavior of the players themselves....I could go on and on,

England's awful, and I really hate the fans, but they're more simple: it's the hubris, the arrogance, the sense of entitlement, along with the woe is me, sympathize with our agony that Gogo nailed with his comp with ----ing Red Sox fans until '04 (at which point they became the worst fans in baseball), the know it all nature of them makes them repellant. But it's traits and characteristics that are aligned and pretty basic.

With Argentina there is a mixture of cynicism, ferocity, playing outside the rules and getting away with it, celebrating their winning by breaking the rules and screaming bloody murder if anyone else does, the obvious and blatant racism, the way they treated a star they were very lucky Spain didn't steal away as a dual nat (and honestly, it would have been better for his life, and his mental health 2005-2018, if he had done a one time switch to Spain). Messi's reward for his loyalty to a dysfunctional, racist, entitled, lunatic fan base was to be personally blamed for every single failure Argentina sustained for the next 13 years after committing to Argentina. Two freaking decades, so yeah, I loved the Hand Of God because it was justice, I have no issue w/that, but the fandom's hypocrisy, and cynicism, same with the media, the players repellant behavior (really the polar opposite of being gracious when winning and in defeat alike) have made them one of the hardest to like nations around. And then you watch how they face hardships, '21-'26, compared to 2006-2019, and its night and day and inspiring.....

There can be no winners, Spain was to some extent unlikable, and boring, England has the worst fan base on earth (and yes racist too, just consult how they handled penalties missed at Euro '21 if you doubt that), France is, erm, France, and Argentina basically are everything great and everything horrible about soccer in one serving of jambalaya. It's great to have such truly special teams make the final four, but are any likable? No. In its own way, it's like 4 Germany's made the final. Nobody's a winner when any of these teams wins. Thankfully one has Messi, so if Messi wins, I'm happy, because while I'm not entirely sure he's a genuinely good guy, he's certainly a better guy than most, especially on his own team, and vastly more likable than the other superstars of this era.

 

I think the key difference is that generally speaking, the rest of the world has only begun dealing with racism during Decolonization and in the last 5 decades since. We've been drenched with racism and coming to terms with it since Jamestown. Trying to figure out how to live together, first with slavery, then without slavery and with a gigantic mix of a gazillion different cultures, in a sense, we imported the entire worlds collective race issues and forced one another to confront them.

I think it's reasonable to say somewhere in the neighborhood of 65-85% of adults came to terms with it, grew, and let go of the issues between the seventies and 2015, and 2016 revealed the ugly 15-35% who didn't and never have and never will (hopefully their children will, or their children's children). But I will say, for us anyway, there is a confrontation, and an argument.....which is probably why other countries which haven't been dealing with this in Europe have monkey chants in stadiums on the regular, and you'd probably get beaten to death before you could reach an exit, if you tried that, at even an SEC game, well, maybe not an SEC game.

It's complicated, best probably summed up in the partisan, but I think totally fair quote from several years ago, "Not every Trump voter is a racist, but every racist supports Trump."

We've still got problems, but we've been fighting about it for centuries, are still fighting about it now and are up front about it because we've been living it for centuries, Europe, and yes, every other continent, has only seemingly really begun to confront their own serious issues with racism since Decolonization.

 

Hmmm, good points all, I looked at that Copa America weirdness, and that probably explains it. Argentina's dominance, 30 total Finals appearances, I think around 16 titles, the next two best teams combined only have 41 total finals appearances (Brazil and Uruguay), I mean, that's a pretty crazy stat, especially considering for whatever reason Argentina was god awful 1975-1989 in the tournament (how were they this bad during the Maradona years ?!?!).

 

Imo, Messi quit primarily because of the federation (he had to pay for a proper flight for the team at one point, Tata Martino and other employees weren't getting paid, etc.), not just the fans. The media was also worse to him than the fans. That's not to say he wasn't criticized or called a pechofrio or anything, but I think it's a bit exaggerated. Fans were more vile to Higuain who missed goals in all those finals, and still blame him more than anyone else for those losses to this day.

The quote when he came back: “I see there are many problems in Argentinian football and I don’t intend to create another one. I don’t want to cause any damage, I’ve always tried to do just the opposite, to help all that I can.

“We need to fix many things in Argentinian football, but I prefer to do this from inside and not criticise from outside. Many things went through my head the day of the last final and I seriously thought of leaving, but I love this country and this shirt too much. I’m grateful to all the people who wanted me to continue playing with Argentina, hopefully we can give them something to cheer about soon.”

Of course it's incredibly ironic we're back at Metlife Stadium 10 years later.

 

Bingo bango. There’s the answer in plain view

edit: I stand corrected. Venice. The city of friggin canals. From one side of the water to the other. Part of the reason I chose them as my team after searching for 35 years. There’s two types of Venice tourists: one and done, or forever. I am the later . I cannot see a scientific situation. Ever get tired of venice.

 

thank god there's a match today

 

It was a lot like this in Brazil in the 80s when I was a kid. No longer...birth rates have plummeted (an astounding 6.28 children in 1960 to roughly 1.55 to 1.65 in recent years, well below replacement level) and kids are more interested in their phones and video games, even in working class communities. I'm part of the problem in a way. I had zero kids, emigrated, and would get mad when kids playing street ball would get in the way of my driving. Bye bye beautiful game.

 

So I guess we’re watching it. To see if Mbappe can score?

 

What fan base of a Top 25 team is happy with how their team went out? England made the semis. That is a damn good result. Who exactly is happy with how their team played their last game of this tournament?
We've had 30 win or go home games so far and as far as I can tell the only fan base who is happy is Cape Verde's. So if 29 of 30 fan bases are outraged then that is what should be expected and normal.
Who wants to bet against me that whoever loses tomorrow will be outraged and say their players or coach crapped the bed?

 

I mean, Uruguay canceled their team's charter flight home after they lost and all their players had to make their own way back.

 

False nines or firing forwards - England's potential life after Kane

▫️ Kane overworked
▫️ Toney, Watkins (both 30) not trusted
▫️ Only 3 English strikers scored 10+ last two Prem seasons - lowest ever
▫️ Who is coming through?
▫️ False nine option?

👇https://t.co/Cofc2GDY5Z

— Dale Johnson (@DaleJohnsonBBC) July 18, 2026

Post Harry Kane England is going to really miss Balogun.

 

As the fans should have because the team completely sucked.

 

I'll be watching. I'm a slave to the groove.

 

I’m at a family reunion and one of my wife’s cousins is sporting a Bellingham jersey. So I suppose that answers that