(Pic from Al Jazeera).

We don’t like to let nuance or complexity nose their way in much these days, eh? Big Money and the algorithms of Big Tech don’t let them. But I have mixed feelings about many things – including football.

Foolishly, I’m gonna out myself as a (relative) supporter of Thomas Tuchel. I was medium-gobsmacked at his appointment, because the English Football Establishment doesn’t generally offer significant roles to mavericks &/or the highly-strung, but somehow the boy Tuchel swam through the net. That surprised and pleased me. I wonder to this day how the interview must have gone: I imagine he was superb and kinda thrillingly convincing. I’ve no doubt that (maybe particularly in a confined space), he could do that thing.

I have said many times that the now pilloried ‘hysterical German’ once turned Chelsea into the best club team in the world, at a time when Klopp’s Liverpool and Pep’s City were magbloodynificent.

It was a short peak – perhaps unsurprisingly – but Chelsea were fabulous, just for those few months. This, and the brilliance that TT gives off during interview and analysis (in a second language, of course) has medium-convinced me that the fella is either The Real Deal or A Real Deal. He’s good; yet hysterical. He’s better and brighter than Southgate… and I thought more likely to actually to win a major tourney, because he’s tougher and sharper. He’s explosive in the manner (well, almost) of a Ferguson and cerebrally strategic in the manner of a Wenger. He’s a mad, top-end, inspirational, obsessive, pro-active coach.

Yebbut most of you want to eat him alive – and I get that. So, not wanting to find myself entirely in the wrong camp here, let’s say that I reckon it’s fair to indulge the following arguments (or mitigations) that arise for some of us, post Argentina.

England had a decent, not brilliant squad. The defence, even at full strength was mediocre *at defending*. (Guehi/Konsa/Stones/Quansah. Neither genuinely robust nor especially watchful). Even when England were thrashing teams in the qualifiers, most of us looked at the chances offered, the holes in and around the box and thought ‘Jeeesus. Issues incoming’.

Zone right out and there may be a sense that this team is something of a symbol of the general malaise/improvement/culture-shift – delete according to prejudice – and not just because they wear the Three Lions, (although this is surely in play?) These guys are under massive, unreasonable scrutiny *and* they are of their era. It’s kinda like you have to be: there’s a mould.

They all play like academy defenders. Smoooooth on the ball; elegantly easing sideways; nonchalantly impervious (well, largely) to incoming attackers – taking the ball ‘under pressure’ in a way that would seem unthinkable and ridiculous to Terry Butcher. Doable, for the most part, because they are better in possession than Terry Butcher: better, in fact than generations of fine, fine players who played a different game. They used to defend and clear. Now they pass and look to draw the opposition in.

This new ‘academy game’, where everybody is comfortable on the ball, is significant progress. Skills have been upped – some of them. But it also means players who aren’t mentally or physically tough enough to defend may find themselves, nominally or otherwise, ‘defending’.

In my moments of anger after the Argentina debacle I called the England team ‘lily-livered’. In a sense I regret that because some folks will assume it has a deliberate racial undertow. It didn’t. It was about lack of spirit (or courage) letting lack of concentration seep in. About eyes glazing over just a little, as though to protect someone or something – probably me, probably us – allowing the feared or inevitable to wash through. I think this affected most of the team… and perhaps in a different way, the manager.

The bus-parking, the low-bloc(k)ing, the re-jig to ‘see the game out’ is being widely described as one of the grossest failures of strategy since the Light Brigade. Understandably, in a sense; we feel like we own that team – and it does, after all, represent us. It was embarrassing.

Argentina are not immediately renowned as great headers of the ball. How many crosses were met – often unchallenged – by Argentinian bonces, late in the game on Thurs? That in itself was a scandal; a scandal of bad defending. With extra bodies in there, how can it possibly be that even well-targeted crosses weren’t nutted away into row Z? (It’s a narrow example, I get that. But symptomatic of an extraordinary collective failure to defend, in the broadest sense. Yes, England should have tried to close on the opposition, win the ball and keep it… but with six or more defenders lined across the box it felt particularly painful that the tradition for committed nutting of the pill absented itself so completely).

He can’t come out and say it but I think that one of the things in Tuchel’s mind, after England finally flung in a great cross themselves (and surprsie, surprise, scored from it!) was that all of Saka, Rashford and Madueke had pretty much played their way out of his side by being somewhere between meek and depressingly wasteful in earlier games. He may have thought he had no option to ‘make positive changes’… and consequently erred towards Mourinho-esque negativity. “Burns; anybody else who’s played in defence. Get them on. And – oh, shit – where’s the lad Maguire when we need him?”

That move – the one that will haunt him and has destroyed his reputation in most quarters – was medium-probably unrepresentative of Tuchel the man and the coach. It almost certainly deserved to fail in the way it did. He was both wrong to seek that route and unable (actually) to drive, inspire or harass his players towards any heroic rearguard action. It was horrible; it was weak.

I do blame the players as much as Tuchel. A) They are nowhere near as good as we or they think they are. (Particularly the defenders). B) They did not do their jobs – particularly the defenders. C) (Argentina were predictably spiteful but) as a group, throughout the game, England spent as much energy looking to flop over the ball under any contact as they did trying to build a move/play some football.

That too, is a disease probably cultivated through academies. Anderson was notably guilty – and I do mean guilty – but the likes of Guehi at the back relentlessly look to feel contact and flop. We, as kids, would shield the ball then take the bloke ‘up our arse’ right out of the game with a smart pass or a shimmy. The sport of football dies just a little every time Kane or whoever ‘draws’ this kind of foul.

Oh – and D) Honestly? Argentina are not that great. Messi is a god but a god you can get at, nowadays. Stay cool, stay busy: get in their faces.

Look, England only very intermittently looked a good a side, in this World Cup. Bellingham and Kane showed quality but were almost non-existent against Argentina. The Three Lions best player and *best attacker* was Djed Spence. He alone(?) showed the spirit and dynamism that Tuchel has surely been after.

If the gaffer succumbed to the temptation to Bring It Home On A Parked Bus, this is profoundly disappointing and obviously, ultimately foolish. I wish he’d brought Rashford on and told the whole team to press. I wish he’d eschewed the low bloc approach for ambitious, cultural, crowd-pleasing reasons. Years later he can note in his autobiography that he knew his defenders weren’t up to it. Get fresh legs in to squeeze and press – just for 20 minutes. Force an error and the game is over in England’s favour. But no. It was a bitter humbling.