Argentina Go Out in Style in an American Jolly Jamboree of Old Bollocks

Yesterday felt strangely flat.

For six weeks the chaise longue had become my office, my press box and, occasionally, my therapist. There had been moments of breathtaking football, moments of utter tedium and enough time during VAR delays to complete a small home extension, but overall it had been a tournament that provided plenty of entertainment, at least until the last game.

Then, almost as quickly as it had arrived, it was over.

Spain lifted the trophy, entirely deservedly. Argentina, meanwhile, appeared to decide before kick-off that if they couldn’t beat Spain at football, they’d simply try to kick the shit out of them instead. It was like watching Holland do the same in that other forgettable final in 2010.

It was certainly a strategy. Whether it had anything to do with football is another matter.

The Bronze Medal Nobody Wanted

Let’s start with football’s strangest invention.

The third-place play-off. Sorry, the Bronze Medal Match, as FIFA now insists on calling it in the hope we’ll all suddenly care about it. That’s modern marketing for you. Give something a grander name and hope nobody notices it’s still essentially an exhibition game for players just a few weeks away from a new domestic season. Football is relentless.

Oddly enough, I fancied this one. England, somehow managing to invent yet another spectacular way of throwing away a World Cup semi-final, against a France side devastated not to be in the final everyone assumed they would win. On paper it looked meaningless. In reality it became one of the best games of the tournament.

France spent the first half looking as though they’d rather already be on the plane home. England, by contrast, looked liberated. Six weeks of pressure, criticism and expectation appeared to have disappeared overnight and suddenly they remembered they were actually rather good at football.

It was exhilarating stuff.

Players ran forward instead of immediately checking whether there was a safe five-yard pass backwards available. Midfielders tried ambitious passes. Full-backs overlapped. Wingers took defenders on. It was almost as though somebody had reminded them football is supposed to be entertainment, not an example the O ring theory.

France still created chances but the only Frenchman who genuinely looked bothered was Didier Deschamps, who spent most of the first half carrying all the demeanour of my old man growing increasingly incandescent whilst pacing the living room trying to explain to yours truly why E=MC squared.

For those of us reclining comfortably on the chaise longue, this was wonderful news. Rather than drifting quietly towards the finish, France returned after half-time with a rocket up their arse.

What followed barely resembled football.

It was more basketball with feet.

France attacked relentlessly. England occasionally countered at breakneck speed. Then France attacked again. Defenders became little more than attackers who dropped back every now and again.

When France pulled it back to 4-3 with a trio of sublime goals, you could almost hear millions of England supporters whispering, “This is going to get ugly…”

However, just after the wonderful Michael Olise missed another great chance, England promptly broke at lightning speed to win a penalty and restore daylight before France responded with another outstanding goal of their own.

The final flourish belonged, fittingly, to Jude Bellingham.

Collecting the ball just inside his own half, he brushed defenders aside, glided through the penalty area and finished magnificently to surpass Gary Lineker’s World Cup goals record and a 6-4 victory.

England’s European Championship campaign should begin and end with one simple instruction.

Give Bellingham the ball.

Football Without Fear

Watching that match, one thought kept coming back to me.

This is what football looks like when nobody is terrified.

No fear of making the mistake that loses a trophy. No fear of becoming tomorrow’s front-page villain or waking up to thousands of social media experts explaining why you’ve ruined their lives. Certainly no fear of finding your effigy burning outside a flat-roofed pub because you misplaced a pass in the eighty-seventh minute.

Instead we watched elite footballers doing what they spend their entire lives learning to do.

Running at defenders, taking risks and trying difficult passes.

Occasionally getting things wrong, but far more often producing moments that reminded us why we all fell in love with football in the first place.

Modern football has become obsessed with avoiding failure. Coaches demand control. Owners demand results. Supporters demand perfection. The inevitable consequence is caution.

Square pass. Another square pass. Back to the goalkeeper.

Repeat until everyone watching begins wondering whether the washing up might actually be more entertaining. Saturday reminded us what football used to be.

Players trusted to express themselves rather than frightened into making the statistically safest decision every single time.

It was a breath of fresh air. Sadly, it didn’t last.

The Final We Deserved… Or Didn’t

Then came the final. Spain against Argentina.

Many of us had grown thoroughly weary of Argentina by now, particularly after their unpunished assault on England in the semi-final, where football occasionally took second place behind attempted GBH.

Sadly, the final unfolded exactly as expected.

Spain monopolised possession with that hypnotic rhythm they’ve perfected over the last twenty years. Pass. Move. Pass. Move. Every player seemed to know where the next three passes were going before receiving the ball.

Argentina approached matters rather differently.

Kick. Foul. Complain. Repeat.

Technically, it remained a football match.

Only just.

The Great American Circus

The first half was poor. The half-time entertainment somehow managed to be even worse.

Good grief.

My late mother would have described it as gauche. Donald Trump would probably have mistaken that for a compliment.

“Everyone’s saying it. Smart people. Great people. They’re saying it’s the gauchest World Cup halftime show in history.”

America is perfectly entitled to enjoy football. Hosting it, however, is another matter entirely.

Football doesn’t require fireworks every seven minutes, celebrity cameos, motivational speeches, enough flashing lights to guide aircraft into Heathrow and a halftime show that looked like Eurovision after somebody had slipped LSD into the catering.

It’s football. Twenty-two players. One ball.

That really is enough isn’t it?

Still, with Gianni Infantino in charge, subtlety was never likely to make the team sheet.

Spain Played Football. Argentina Played… Something Else

The second half offered more of the same.

Spain passed. Argentina kicked. Spain passed some more. Argentina complained.

Messi even attempted to have Marc Cucurella sent off because he’d put a hand over his mouth. I thought he was a golden boy? Perhaps not.

Apparently that’s now a red-card offence and I have absolutely no idea why. Presumably breathing too enthusiastically will be next.

Eventually Enzo Fernández was dismissed for what felt like his fifth sending-off offence across the last two matches. Frankly, he’d spent most of the tournament conducting a convincing audition for cage fighting. He’s a horrible fucker.

Spain finally found the winner in extra time, richly deserved after spending most of the evening demonstrating that football is considerably easier when you actually possess the ball.

Remarkably, Argentina suddenly remembered attacking was an option. Their one glorious chance fell to Simeone.

Naturally, he missed. Poetic justice still occasionally exists as he’s as horrible as his dad.

Even FIFA Couldn’t Hide It

Then came the final whistle and Argentina responded in the only way they seemed genuinely comfortable throughout the tournament.

They started another fight.

Equally predictably, FIFA’s television director suddenly became fascinated by absolutely anything happening elsewhere. Somewhere in Row Z there was probably a bloke eating a hot dog who briefly became the most important person in world football.

Unfortunately for FIFA, this is 2026. There were eighty thousand mobile phones inside the stadium. Within minutes, the footage was everywhere. Cue the inevitable television reaction.

“Nobody likes to see scenes like this.”

Really?

I rather appreciated them. Not because violence is entertaining, but because it stripped away the pretence. This wasn’t passion. It wasn’t clever gamesmanship. It certainly wasn’t those fashionable “dark arts” we’re endlessly encouraged to admire.

It was simply a team behaving exactly as they’d behaved throughout the tournament, only this time everyone got to see it because the television cameras couldn’t spin quickly enough.

Argentina are one of football’s greatest nations. This Argentina team, however, spent six weeks trying to convince us that cynicism is a substitute for greatness.

It isn’t.

England’s Next Step

I’d still rather have seen England against Spain. Spain would almost certainly have won. Probably quite comfortably but England would have had a go. By that, I mean more than not one shot in the whole of normal time.

Who knows, they might even have found a way of unsettling them. I’m fairly confident they wouldn’t have decided that kicking lumps out of Spain was Plan A.

Still,third place is nothing to be ashamed of.

History will probably judge this as another successful England tournament and perhaps even part of a genuine golden generation. So, let’s be careful what we wish for.

Yet if England are ever going to win one of these things, they have to rediscover courage. Not courage in the old-fashioned blood-and-thunder sense that got us nowhere at all.

The courage to take risks. To dribble and push on. To trust gifted footballers to be gifted footballers rather than machines drilled into getting the basics right.

Because Saturday’s bronze medal game showed exactly what this squad can produce once the shackles come off. If England continue choosing caution over creativity against the very best sides, they’ll continue getting the same familiar outcome.

I still can’t say the words “ going on getting bad results” without hearing Jimmy Hill’s voice. Back in the early 1990s Trevor Brooking famously said:

“We’re not creative enough. We’re not positive enough.”

Thirty years later, England have better players than Trevor could ever have imagined. They’re still trying to solve exactly the same problem.

As meaningless as it was, maybe the France win offered a glimmer of something different.

Maybe.