To ask why the England team (the men) keep falling at the final hurdle, (well virtually at the final hurdle,) at the football World Cup ... and The Euros too?

They’re just not good enough at the end of the day. Which is quite pitiful really considering the obscene amount of money pumped into making them good.

England don't "fall at the final hurdle", they fall as soon as they play a top team.

It's happened in every single tournament. Cruise through qualifying beating teams ranked in the 30s, 40s, 50s and lower, then same at the Finals, then as soon as they run into another top 6 team - Out

England have one solitary win over a top-10 team in their entire history of World Cup Finals participation. This was the 1966 Final at Wembley. FIFA only started ranking teams officially in the 1990s, but by using ELO you can apply the same thing to historical teams. So that's 60 years and counting since England beat a top-10 side at a World Cup, something they had never managed before and haven't managed since.

The Euros record is similar, having never beaten a top 6 ranked side in the entire history of that competition either.

I think it's about perception. England is a large nation with a huge football following and a league awash with money, so the perception is that England's national team should be competitive with Brazil, Argentina, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the historical "top" sides, when in actual fact if you look as comparative achievement, then England's peers are Greece, Denmark, Netherlands, Portugal, Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia.

The England men's team has never, at any point in the history of the sport, been a truly top tier side, so it's the expectations that are out of whack with reality.

Words fail me 😅😅

Only the winners emerge with any respect apparently, everyone else has failed. They've all bottled it. Imagine being "not very good" when you're at least the 4th best in the world. Ludicrous.

Well, as I said further up, I don't know anything at all about football, but it must certainly be a unique sport if being in the Top 4 teams in the world makes you weak.

Out of interest, who else isn't very good? Is it just 4th and under, or are 3rd and second considered good? Or is there only one good team in the whole world and they are the current cup holders?

No but there's something called 'hope'. I'll bet you that the Norwegian team weren't there with the attitude of seeing how far they'd get. They'd have hoped they could lift the cup and quite rightly. A defeatist attitude is pointless.

I don't really follow football but all my memories of England playing since 1996 seem to invovle there being a 'star player' and if they didn't play, got injured etc then that was it. I was wondering if this was just the media wanting to play up a 'hero' or reality.

They bottle it at the last minute and the defence has always been weak.

Because they are not as good as teams like Argentina....

I think the England team always has a couple of really good individual players but as a team they are simply not able to take the pressure and reach a final.

I can't help but think that they lack that extra magic and motivation that makes a winning team.

I think Top 4 in the world doesn't make us "not very good". If I was 4th best at anything in the world I'd consider myself to be very good indeed and would be proud of that!

Because, despite the fact that this game is elevated to cult level and a tedious national obsession, we are really not very good at it.

The Lionesses have acquitted themselves better on the international stage but this apparently makes some men rather cross. They are quick to point out how much 'better' the men's team/game are and that the women can't beat an adolescent boys' team. Well, no. For the simple explanation that the average strength of a 12-year-old boy is equal to the strength of an adult female. Which is the obvious reason why there's a men's game and a women's game.

Had England won their supporters would have been absolutely insufferable.

Top four in the world is alright isn't it?. There were a lot more than four teams in the competition.

@3luckystars

well, they did fail. They lost last night. I don’t know what else you’d call it

Up until Gordon scored, England were doing well. It is easy to blame Tuchel for the substitutions, and I do think he got them wrong, but things started to go wrong for England before that. The goal should have given them a boost and encouraged them to keep playing the same way. Instead, they almost immediately started retreating and playing defensively, and Argentina started getting chances.

It makes me wonder if the players didn't really believe they could win. I'm sure they will all say that they believed the win was possible, but did they really, deep down, believe that they could end the decades of failure or did they expect that something would go wrong again.

Not always the same reason each time.
In the 2000s it was sometimes club rivalries reducing the capability of the team.
In some tournaments it's the fatigue you had from being in the Premier League, where all matches are tough.
Last night was poor managerial tactics.

It's NOT entitled to think/hope we have a good chance each time. It's not easy, mind, particularly with more and more teams involved each time these days.

It's entitled to believe in English exceptionalism, we are England and better than those funny foreigners over there so therefore by default brilliant and should win everything. That's certainly not where I am coming from.

I'm coming from the position that this is our national sport, we have such a good grass roots system, so much money spent on the game and a lot of talent out there, so it's fair enough to think we might be in with a shout. Which we are/have been, in the last few years and largely I'm happy with that progress.

Actually the teams that made the finals then were far stronger in my opinion. As opposed to the early stages now.

Exactly.

It happens to many teams, not just GB.

Does it matter?

I don't think it's entitled to have expected the England team to do better generally, particularly since the 1990s when VAST amounts of money has been spent on the game in this country and the terrific grass roots system that we have. They have been much better since 2018 which is great but for me England should always have been a top 5 team in the world and be in with a shout of winning the World Cup. I don't think it's OTT or entitled to say that given the EPL is one of the strongest leagues in the world and that we have some very good home grown players.

France have in my lifetime (I'm 50) won the WC and Euros twice.

I don't moan about going out in the SF but just wish our record was better overall. We could have done so much better in the 1970s-1990s if there wasn't such a drinking culture in the team. Look at what kind of shape the 1990 squad were in, in comparison to the Germans. We managed to run them pretty close but seriously, physique-wise it was embarrassing. If they had just been fitter and more athletic we could have won more back then. Then in mid 2000s to mid 2010s there was a seriously poor attitude problem. It was awful, I could barely watch them or football at all.

As has been said countless times already this was mainly down to a tactical error on TTs part, the negativity of his changes was reflected in Englands play from that point onwards. Seems blindingly obvious that trying to cling on to a narrow lead for 40+ mins was never going to work against this opposition.

I think Mainoo could have made the difference last night, he plays well in tight spaces under pressure and was a mistake not to have let him play more. Saka or even Rashford would have been a more positive change when Gordon was brought off. But ultimately the killer instinct to kill the game off was, as often in the past, missing when we needed it most.

Because the argies were faster and better? They all seem so small and nippier.

England did brilliantly to get to the semis though when some didn't even progress from the group stages.

I was really proud of the England team after Mexico.

They went and played the home nation in extremely difficult conditions. They had to play at altitude for ninety minutes and had no time to adjust to those conditions.

Then they went to Miami and had to play in the sweltering heat but managed to pull through.

It is very difficult to keep playing, then flying off to a different city with a different climate and playing again a few days later. England have had to play everywhere from Boston to Mexico City. Eventually it caught up with them.

I agree. Should have been at least one sending off

Flip the coin: why do we think that England OUGHT to be in the final every single time? Like they are entitled to think that? Why can’t we accept that other teams are better?