MIAMI, July 17 (Reuters) – England manager Thomas Tuchel said he had no regrets over the decisions he made in the second half of Wednesday’s World Cup semi-final against Argentina, when his team took a 1-0 lead but lost 2-1.
Tuchel has been widely berated for his defensive substitutions and tactics as Argentina laid siege to England’s penalty area before scoring two late goals to go through to Sunday’s final against Spain.
England face France in Miami on Saturday in a clash to decide who finishes third in the tournament, but Tuchel’s pre-match press conference was dominated by questions about the semi-final.
“If you are asking if I regret my decisions, if this is the question, then I say no. I don’t regret my decisions because I felt that we became too passive,” he told reporters on Friday.
“I took several decisions, trusting my instinct, my intuition, my experience, trusting my competitiveness, and I took the decision in order to help the team and get the result.
“I would regret if I didn’t help. I would regret if we didn’t react, but I have no regrets over the decision itself.”
STIFLING HEAT
Tuchel conceded that England’s last-16 victory over Mexico at altitude, the extra-time win over Norway in the quarter-finals in stifling Miami heat plus all the travelling the squad had done had possibly caught up with them.
He said that to look at his substitutions strictly in terms of offence and defence was simplistic and that in his view the game was more complex than that.
“No one knows the outcome of any other substitution of any other changes,” he said. “If drama is needed and if the blame game needs to be played, okay, you can do that. But I have the right to not engage in that.”
Asked about one comment that his substitutions were “cowardice”, Tuchel refused to engage.
“I don’t read praise and I don’t believe in comments like this,” he said. “If we win the game tomorrow, we have the best results of a World Cup in 60 years. That’s the perspective to it.”
England won the World Cup in 1966 but have lost both previous third-place playoff matches after semi-final losses in 1990 and 2018.
Tuchel said he would be making changes for Saturday’s game against France, which he viewed as an opportunity for England to show they had closed the gap on the world’s best teams.
“Nobody wants to be in this game tomorrow,” he said. “All of these four teams wanted to be in New York, but it is an official World Cup game.
“It is a big game against one of the very best teams in the world. It’s a moment to show that we are actually made of what we showed through the whole tournament. There is no doubt about that.”
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney in New York, editing by Ed Osmond)
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