England’s World Cup heartbreak deepens after late Argentina collapse

England’s wait for a men’s World Cup final goes beyond 60 years after Argentina overturned Anthony Gordon’s 55th-minute opener to win 2-1 in Atlanta and break England’s hold on the semi-final. The defeat sent Argentina into Sunday’s final against Spain and left England to face France in Saturday’s third-place match.

For Thomas Tuchel, the immediate issue was not the scoreline alone but how England let control slip. After Gordon put England ahead, Tuchel said his side had “got too passive”, and the match turned on two late Argentina goals that exposed how fragile the lead had become. England had been within five minutes of normal time of reaching their first men’s World Cup final since 1966, when they beat West Germany at Wembley.

The structural question now hanging over Tuchel’s team is whether this was a one-off collapse or a sharper indictment of England’s level under pressure. BBC Sport pundits Wayne Rooney, Joe Hart and Micah Richards said Tuchel’s tactical decisions cost England, and Rooney said the players would have lost belief after the second-half substitutions. That criticism cut to the core of England’s deficiencies in the match: the inability to sustain midfield control after scoring, the lack of impact from the bench, and the failure to find a second goal that might have changed Argentina’s response.

Lionel Messi played against England for the first time in his career, a detail that underlined the scale of the occasion and the weight of the failure. England had their best moment through Gordon’s goal, but they could not turn it into a defining performance, and the match drifted away as Argentina grew stronger late on.

The emotional toll was plain after the final whistle. Jude Bellingham said his head was “fuzzy with disappointment”, while captain Harry Kane said he was “gutted” in a post-match interview. BBC Sport described the result as possibly England’s most painful since 1966, and the feeling was reinforced by the age of the drought itself: another campaign has ended without the final appearance England have chased for nearly six decades.