FIFA World Cup 2026: England Tournament Thread [R]

Par for the fecking course mate.

 

I thought Stones looked shaky and off the pace as befits someone who's only played a handful of games last season.

Hopefully he'll improve if he's needed.

 

The argie fans singing 'if you're not dancing you're an Englishman ' during the game. They're clearly as passionate about this fixture as we are

 

“Of course I want England to do well.” 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Erling Haaland explains why he’ll still be keeping a close eye on England despite Norway’s World Cup exit. pic.twitter.com/4aV7TGIFBc

— Match of the Day (@BBCMOTD) July 12, 2026

 

Now this is a movement I can get behind. https://t.co/Wr85X9nkm5 pic.twitter.com/EemtEGuWi0

— Alex (@AO1865) July 12, 2026

 

I really don't want to be negative here but it's quite annoying to see how heavily Tuchel is getting praised by the fan base for "getting us to a semi-final" compared to how much Southgate got hammered in 2024, when this is essentially exactly the same tournament performance-wise.

The players have got us here in spite of Tuchel, not because of him. If anything I think Tuchel has made their lives much harder.

 

Southgate was our best ever coach imo. If tuchel can get us to a world cup final on foreign soil then he'll have surpassed Southgate

 

Nah. He'd need to do more than that to surpass Southgate.

 

Southgate charged England into a band of brothers and thats still whats getting us though.

 

Cesc Fàbregas was at the England vs. Norway game with his family pic.twitter.com/NxvT1P1Z67

— Cleverly 💐 (@Cleverlydey4u) July 12, 2026

It's interesting how many Spanish players and managers that come to England professionally end up as Anglophiles.

 

This result. For me it makes Tuchel the third best England coach ever. After Ramsey and Southgate. Robson also has a WC semi, but he **** up two Euros (maybe considered them as glorified friendlies?). So Tuchel is in front of Robson for me.

 

Venables has to be up there.

 

He has a Euros semi. A WC semi tops that for me.

 

We've got 'the world's sexiest actress' onboard as well (never heard of her)

Alexandra Daddario supporting England at the World Cup 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 pic.twitter.com/oOXbTRlvVc

— DAILY CELEBZ (@beautifulcelebz) July 11, 2026

 

I thought our euro 96 tournament was a bit lucky. We were shit against Switzerland. Got lucky with the penalty against Scotland Netherlands were just as good as us in the 4-1 win. Spain had a good goal disallowed in the quarters but against Germany that was our best performance

 

Which makes starting him an insane decision.

 

That's a great clip which shows the whole flight of the kick clearly, with no change in direction. Regardless, I'm sure Wiregate will become the urban legend of how England managed to win.

 

And the winner of the battle between Harry Kane and Erling Haaland, is Jude Bellingham.

 

Once again it comes into question his absurd squad selection choices when your picking players just for the vibes and leaving genuine options at home who could step in for Rice.

 

We effectively have a squad with 2 central midfielders given clearly Tuchel doesn't rate Mainoo in the slightest. It's all rather odd, we have 3 centre forwards despite the fact that Kane plays basically every single minute, yet any time our midfield requires one of Rice/Anderson off we repeatedly have to shift around the entire team to try and make it work.

Truly puzzling. We selected 6 centre backs based on covering every possibility. Fair play to Burn he's justified his choice for example. But for central midfield Tuchel just seems to have accepted muddling through. Surely he cannot rate the midfielders he left at home so badly that he'd be terrified to have them on the pitch - this is a man who is very comfortable having Quansah as our right back after all.

We keep going on about Alex Scott but even if he for some reason doesn't rate him (and he must rate him somewhat to have called him up to the initial camp), then he's still called up and left behind the likes of Jones and Garner who could approximate the hard running of Rice/Anderson on a like for like basis.

Whatever happens this tournament I hope, even if he will never admit it, he does at least deep down understand how flawed this squad was and how he's essentially relying on luck of first choices being available to get him through. The full back situation nearly cost us in Mexico, the central midfield nearly cost us here. Hopefully we can keep going through but it is definitely in spite of the self created weaknesses in the squad.

 

Henderson might have played last might if his arm wasn’t in a cast. .

 

He might have had to but once again he’s there mainly for his off field activities and nowhere near one of our better midfielders who were left at home.

 

Yes, seemingly. But coaches do things like this all the time. I guess it's risk they take because sometimes it works and sometimes not. In this case it did'nt work. Hopefully Rice is fit for the semi, but if not we will just manage without him.