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?

In the whole first half and into the second half including our goal we were by far the better team.

Because they’re not as good at kicking the bag of air between 3 bars as the other group of blokes! That’s it

Agree! It’s a metaphor for life; incredible highs, incredible lows. Winners, losers. Unfairness, cheating. Glory and pain. Roll on the new season xx

The Argentinians play in a manner that is quite different to ours. Like a pantomime and not at all composed. There’s a lot of hate for England, pressure probably gets to them. FIFA can’t stand England either. We are not a winning team at tournaments. Who cares about coming third? If means nothing.

They did fail. They did not win.

As a country we also don’t invest in our own grassroots.

Because they are not good enough. They had an easy run and until last night the toughest game they had was Mexico who are ranked 14th. The first time they played another top team it showed how hyped up they are, when they struggled to beat Ghana it was clear that they weren’t good enough to win the tournament.

Because we are not as good as the media make us out to be and we play a very different style of football to other teams, which does us no favours
saying that I have no idea what the tactics were after it went 1-0 it looks like we lost the plot and decoded to only play short balks in Argentinas half, was easy to see those goals were coming by the constant attacking which is how Argentina play

Once they score a goal they seem to sort of relax and then the other team don't so they don't win.
For whatever reason England just isn't quite good enough to win. On a slightly different note does anyone think it's ridiculous that England are France have to play on Saturday? Is anyone going to watch it or really care?
I bet even the teams would rather just go home today and spend time with their families.

Because knock-out football is hard.

I would ask not why we "only" got to the semi final but why for years until 2018 we got knocked out earlier in the competition or didn't even qualify, even for the Euros at times.

Our recent record isn't bad at all, but I feel that overall we should have a similar record to France and we are nowhere near that.

This is the first football match I've ever watched, and I didn't even watch the whole thing, so I might be talking absolute rubbish, but to me it looked like they sort of gave up after scoring the first goal and proceeded to basically leave it all to the goalie. I don't know why. I also thought that the Argentinian team were allowed to be a lot rougher without getting any yellow cards, I didn't understand why the rules were different.

To see how far they get? To get the best placing that they can? Do you really think every single team who went into the World Cup thought they were going to win it??

Why would you expect England to win?

There's nothing inherrently better about English players or team. Countries like Argentina or Spain have roughly comparable population size, and being economically a bit weaker, maybe the dream of becoming a pro player is/was a bit stronger there some 10- 20 years ago.

I would also add ...

Watch England vs. Ghana for an example of how a good low block works against unimaginative opposition and kills the game.

Watch England vs. Mexico for desperate defending that just about gets you over the line.

Someone talks about you…do you just walk straight over and hit them in the head?!

So the Norwegian team played but never expected to win? Really? I'd have thought that was the point of being in the tournament for any team and their fans.

Mexico aren't as good as Argentina.

Spot on!

I’ve been through too many of these not to know they’re just not good enough to win.

Objectively, they did fail. They lost the match.

As they progress through the competition, they meet better teams.

Sorry I haven't RTFT so don't know if this has already been said, but when you think about it there are multiple teams at the start, and by the end, just one winner. All teams but one will lose a match and so be 'out'. Just statistically, the experience of not being the champions is massively more probable for every team than the experience of being the champions! And if you are a good team, then your experience will be - you got quite close (last 8, or even last 4!) and then lose.

We played in the last ten mins how we should have been playing after Gordon got us the goal. It's how argentina played . We were too little too late.

England is a very good team, but not good enough.

Either way, the field was tiny compared to what it is. Much harder to win one now

A good take on it. Talent + hard work x killer edge = winner! It is a magic formula.

I remember when we were falling at the first or send hurdle or were not even at the races

I will take this over that