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?

[GorgeousSpringtime]

Not an England-team bashing thread, but why, oh WHY do they - the men - keep falling at the final hurdle (well, virtually the final hurdle,) every time at the football (soccer) World Cup - and the Euro Cup too...?

They do so well, and get so far, and then BANG they're out. Nearly always in the top 8, or top 4, (and the top 2, in the World Cup once, and a couple of times in the Euros I think,) but never the winner. (Not since 1966 anyway!)

Is it nerves? Is it that they're so anxious to win that they keep making silly mistakes? Are they just not quite good enough? WHAT IS IT? Why do they keep getting so close, but just never manage to get the win?!

As I said, I am not bashing them, and they did well, and I am proud of them, but I just get so frustrated that they can't quite ever get the win!

!

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.

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.

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??

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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

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

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

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?

I agree. Should have been at least one sending off

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.

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.

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.

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.

Agreed @DeftGoldHedgehog ! Well said.

Exactly.

It happens to many teams, not just GB.

Does it matter?

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

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.

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.

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.

@3luckystars

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