Another fine Messi

England fall short again

We have our finalists.

Argentina

Poor old England are coming home, again sans football. Yet again we lose to the first top side we meet in the knock-out stages. For all the hype about Thomas Tuchel, he was unable to change the basic England tournament narrative of each knock-out match against a decent team - play well in the first half but then run out of gas in the second and cling on for dear life. Against a second tier team like Mexico and Norway it can sometimes work, against a top side it hardly ever does. Now the knives are out for Tuchel - we always need someone to blame.

After our good goal, to say we retreated into our shell is an understatement. We found a tiny crevice in a corner of our shell and tried to hide in there. 12% possession between our goal and Argentina’s second. Did Tuchel respond with his usual counter-intuitive boldness? No. He was temporarily inhabited by the ghost of England managers past and took Gordon off for Konsa - it did not feel right at the time, surely we needed an outlet on the break. Nico O Reilly came on too and then the great Dan Burn, the giant motte in the middle of England’s siege defences. We were now all defenders, plus Harry Kane in grandfather mode and a facsimile of Jude Bellingham, drained of the essence of Jude Bellingham. Maybe Tuchel realised just how spent all our players were, and that Rorke’s Drift Part Three was the only route to victory.

It was not quite enough. After a quiet first half, Messi began to dominate the game, teeing up chances for his vastly inferior colleagues to stuff up. But eventually one of them scored, the deeply uncharming Mr Enzo Fernandez. He’s had a great tournament unfortunately. We had nothing left. We were gone. The second goal was not a great surprise, and again it was Messi putting it on a plate for the usually reliably profligate Lautaro Martinez. And that was pretty much that.

The better team won. It was a game too far for Tuchel’s exhausted troops.

Maybe the intensity and physicality of the British game and the demands of our competitive Premier League mean that it will be nigh on impossible for England ever to win a summer tournament. Maybe the England hard-running, low possession playing style, which never really changes even when the personnel and manager do, is perfectly unsuited to the demands of a summer tournament. Maybe, though some of the foreign stars of this tournament play in England too, like Rodri and Enzo Fernandez.

It’s an enduring mystery. We never seem to be quite good enough. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that football left home a long time ago and is perfectly happy somewhere in the sunshine, and we have to make do with its holiday videos and vague insincere mumbles every four years about coming back. It’s not.

England now have a time-wasting kick-around and 2-0 defeat to France on Saturday in the third place play-off, before some well-earned holidays.

Spain

Spain vanquished France, the star team of the tournament, showing again the importance in the World Cup of peaking at the right time. France peaked in the group stage and have been slowly descending the summit since that time. Here the rope snapped.

France wanted to press aggressively to disrupt Spain’s sometimes turgid possession-based play - the tactic that was so effective against Morocco, who play like Spain but with much less confidence and technical ability. Apart from forcing a couple of early misplaced passes, the tactic failed. Spain are just too technically secure and the French press was insufficiently organised and energetic. Then when France got the ball, Spain are fearsomely effective out of possession - sharp, aggressive tackling and interception, denying forwards any space, defending decisively and bravely. It’s the way Spain have played for the last 20 years.

Rodri does not run, he materialises, calmly repossessing the ball like a parent moving a knife away from a toddler at the dinner table. And Cucurella, despise him or hate him, plays marvellously for Spain, like a poodle sniffer-dog chasing dementedly after a giant ball of cocaine. Laporte and Simon were front-footed and muscular. The forwards were no more than competent, with occasional flashes of brilliance from Lamal and Olmo, but that defensive shield was enough.

Expectation weighed too heavily on France, heavy favourites to win on Bastille Day. Over-confident? Or secretly under-confident against a team they rarely beat? Whatever the reason, the Spanish radiated conviction and assurance, the French were ragged. Though even in the late stages, the game was not done - a France goal would have changed everything, as it did in the final 4 years ago against Argentina and in the Nations League semi-final a year ago between these two teams, when Spain had a 5-1 lead that got pegged back to a nervous 5-4. But it never came.

Now on to Sunday evening. Spain are surely too good for Argentina, even with Messi’s unique brilliance and ability to bend history to his will. He couldn’t do it again could he?

Trump is meant to be there. After saying he wanted nothing to do with Spain at the NATO summit and ordering a halt to all trade with them, let’s see how far the Spanish are willing to take it if they win. Short of ritually disembowelling him, whatever bad thing they can do to Trump will win the enthusiastic support of their prime minister, Pedro Sanchez. Good for him.

Spain is far from perfect, but wouldn’t you love to have a prime minister who praised demonstrators for ruining Spain’s premier cycling event last year? “First of all, our recognition and absolute respect for the athletes, but also our admiration for the Spanish people who mobilise for just causes such as that of Palestine". Most of you are British, so I expect the answer is no.

Or what about La Nit del Focs, the festival in the town where I am now, when, in a heatwave with wildfire alerts at maximum, firefighters set fires for schoolchildren to jump over? Imagine that in Britain - the furious headlines in the right wing press, the moaning on social media, the lawsuits, the calls to defund the fire service. Here everyone enjoys the mild chaos of the whole thing. The Spanish are, by some British standards, a bunch of anarchic lunatics. And yet they are the most organised and disciplined team in the competition by some distance.

Viva la Roja!!!