{"id":550577,"date":"2026-07-15T07:49:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T07:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/550577\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T07:49:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T07:49:11","slug":"ken-early-england-being-favourites-against-argentina-shows-we-cant-resist-thinking-of-football-in-simple-terms-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/550577\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Early: England being favourites against Argentina shows we can\u2019t resist thinking of football in simple terms \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

World Cup semi-final: England v Argentina, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, Wednesday, 8pm Irish time \u2013 Live on RT\u00c9 2 & BBC One<\/p>\n

On Wednesday night, the children of the 21st century get their first experience of one of the historic World Cup classics. England and Argentina \u2013 fear and loathing, hatred and envy, fire and fury, magic and madness.<\/p>\n

The bookmakers have England as slight favourites \u2013 why? Maybe this reflects a flood of patriotic bets from England. Or maybe it shows how we cannot resist thinking about football in the most simplistic terms.<\/p>\n

Joe Cole summed up this line-of-thought as well as anyone on Gary Lineker\u2019s Netflix<\/a> show, when he said: \u201cWe\u2019ve got too much pace for Argentina . . . and we\u2019re gonna beat them. I feel it in my bones.\u201d<\/p>\n

England clearly do have more pace and power than Argentina. There is nobody remotely like Jude Bellingham in the Argentina team. They don\u2019t have a fast winger like Anthony Gordon, they don\u2019t have midfield warriors like Elliot Anderson or Declan Rice . . . and therefore . . . England should win?<\/p>\n

How do we keep forgetting that a football match is not a race? (And that even a race is not always to the swift . . .)<\/p>\n

Yes, England have the speed and the strength . . . but Argentina have Messi! France were the stronger and faster team in the last World Cup final<\/a> but it was Messi that made the difference.<\/p>\n

\"DeclanDeclan Rice (left) has not been at his best at the World Cup, but Jude Bellingham (second from left) has been outstanding for England. Photograph: Richard Pelham\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

And are we at risk of overstating England\u2019s physical advantage? On paper, they had more pace and power than Norway, but it wasn\u2019t much in evidence in Miami on Saturday night. Clearly, Rice is a horse of a man. But the Rice we have been seeing in the World Cup is not the Rice who stars in a current L\u2019Oreal body spray ad, gazing admiringly and almost curiously at his own rippling torso, like an alien inhabiting an earthling avatar for the first time. The actual Rice of the World Cup has been reduced by injury and illness and pain. How much of the English power and pace is currently theoretical?<\/p>\n

England\u2019s centre backs, John Stones and Marc Gu\u00e9hi, are not renowned for power and pace \u2013 and both have struggled for full fitness. Reece James certainly has pace and power but we know his hamstring could disintegrate at any moment. Noni Madueke was picked for pace and power against Norway and hardly managed to control a single ball in the 45 minutes he spent on the field. Even half-fit Bukayo Saka was much more dangerous.<\/p>\n

Bellingham is fully fit and in magnificent form: he will be the player Argentina most fear. But Argentina, for all their manifest vulnerabilities, have also shown they have ways of figuring games out.<\/p>\n

Lip-readers decoded the footage of a discussion between manager Lionel Scaloni and midfielder Leandro Paredes which took place at 1-1 during the Argentina-Switzerland game<\/a>. Paredes was explaining that the Swiss centre forward kept forcing him to go to the right, making it impossible for him to control the centre of the field. Scaloni asked him what he needed. They agreed he would put Nicolas Otamendi on to deal with the Swiss forward and free up Paredes.<\/p>\n

Do the England players have this kind of two-way discussion with Thomas Tuchel? It doesn\u2019t seem like it. At half-time in Miami on Saturday night<\/a>, Bellingham came off the field having scored one brilliant goal and set up another that was disallowed for offside in the last three minutes of play.<\/p>\n

Tuchel chose that moment to tell him: Okay Jude, now you\u2019re moving to left eight, Elliot, you\u2019re six. <\/p>\n

Realising some minutes later that he had made a mistake, the England manager announced: Jude, you\u2019re back to right ten, Reece you\u2019re in at six. Elliot, back to left eight.<\/p>\n

\"EnglandEngland manager Thomas Tuchel issues instructions to Jude Bellingham during England’s World Cup round-of-32 win against DR Congo. Photograph: Michael Reaves\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Tuchel was doing what he felt the team required, but Bellingham was understandably seething at being moved out of the position in which he had just done so much damage. This frustration surely played into the shots he fired across Tuchel\u2019s bow in the post-match interviews.<\/p>\n

With Tuchel, you get the sense of the coach moving players around his chessboard to find solutions \u2013 and making it look more difficult than it perhaps should be, given that the obvious solution for England is always: get Harry in the box and Jude running in there and get some crosses in.<\/p>\n

With Argentina, you see players and coaches collectively finding solutions to the problems they face. And this team is led by the greatest problem solver in the history of the game.<\/p>\n

Against Egypt, Lionel Messi went out to the right when Argentina were facing elimination and humiliation at 2-0 down, not because Scaloni had told him to go there but because he felt in that moment that was where Argentina needed him to be.<\/p>\n

No coach has told Messi what to do since Pep Guardiola at Barcelona when Messi was in his early 20s, and even Pep had to stop doing it after a couple of years. Any coach since then who has tried to give him instructions has not lasted long. Suggesting to Messi what he ought to be doing out on the field is a bit like leaning over Leonardo\u2019s shoulder and telling him, \u201cthis is good, but she\u2019d look prettier if you had her smiling a bit more\u201d.<\/p>\n

By Messi\u2019s standards, his performance against Switzerland was a no-show. Has the 39-year-old finally run out of energy in the last week of five?<\/p>\n

Somehow, you are reluctant to bet against him finding a little bit more in the tank.<\/p>\n

World Cup Wallchart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Cup semi-final: England v Argentina, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, Wednesday, 8pm Irish time \u2013 Live on RT\u00c9 2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2956,61,60,112,4018],"class_list":["post-550577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-fifa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}