And while I still believe Mbappé has a stronger case than Lamine Yamal, for some reason, as I completed that article, I paused and ultimately decided to rescind it before publication.

After watching Harry Kane and England throughout the latest international break, I am glad I did.

With league football back, I am confident that Kane should, and will, win the 2026 Ballon d’Or, becoming the first English player to receive the award since Michael Owen in 2001.

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The foundation of Kane’s case is his extraordinary season with Bayern Munich, where he scored 61 goals in 51 appearances across all competitions, including 36 in the Bundesliga and 14 in the Champions League. His performances helped Bayern capture the Bundesliga and German Cup double, while his 36 league goals earned him the European Golden Shoe for the second time in his career.

Although Bayern did not win the Champions League, they reached the semifinals, and Kane performed admirably in that competition as well.

Another important part of Kane’s case has been the exceptional quality of his overall play. As other writers have alluded to, his work rate, willingness to come back and help his teammates, and involvement in link-up play are integral parts of Bayern’s success. He is not simply a prolific goalscorer, but one of the most complete footballers in the world.

And what we saw from England during the international break provided another excellent illustration of that versatility.

There was a fluidity to England’s attacking play, with Kane, Jude Bellingham, Anthony Gordon, Morgan Rogers and others moving interchangeably into different roles, creating an explosive and unpredictable attack. Kane’s ability to drop deeper, link up with his teammates and create opportunities while remaining an extraordinary goalscoring threat is an integral part of that success.

England’s World Cup campaign ended in disappointment at the semifinal stage, although they subsequently secured third place. Kane contributed admirably throughout the tournament, scoring six goals and helping England achieve their best World Cup finish since 1966.

His iconic performance against DR Congo, in which he scored both goals in a come-from-behind victory, was particularly memorable. It was a match England should never have needed to make so difficult, but Kane delivered when his country needed him most.

The performance even prompted Thierry Henry to dub him “Sir Harry Kane.”

Kane also contributed a nifty assist in England’s victory over Mexico, once again demonstrating the quality of his all-around play.

There is certainly a strong argument for Lamine Yamal, whose excellent club season, impressive start to the new campaign and supporting role in his country’s World Cup triumph deserve recognition.

But I believe we have gone too far in allowing tournament victories to determine the outcome of individual awards.

Being part of a team that wins a major tournament is not necessarily more significant than playing a more central role for a team that does not. The Ballon d’Or is an individual award, and the quality and magnitude of a player’s contribution should remain the primary consideration.

And while England did not win the World Cup, Kane’s performances throughout the year, both for Bayern Munich and his country, were extraordinary.

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As I wrote following England’s defeat to Spain, there was a wild swing in the betting odds between Lamine Yamal and Kane. Kane’s missed penalty may well have handed Spain the match, while Leão’s early goal contributed to England’s difficulties.

But I also wrote that an early defeat can sometimes help focus a team, and that is precisely what appears to have happened.

Kane and England responded exactly as I had hoped.

England could probably have won all three of their subsequent matches regardless. But the manner in which they responded, persevering through a difficult moment and emerging with three triumphant performances, was considerably more meaningful than simply winning the encounter against Spain would have been.

Kane scored six goals in four matches during the international break, most notably in England’s extraordinary 7–0 demolition of Croatia in Rijeka, where he scored twice and assisted another.

That result, in my mind, was far more significant than the defeat to Spain, particularly given the nature of the competition and what it suggests about the future of the English national team.

England followed that performance with a convincing 3–0 victory over Czechia, with Kane once again scoring twice and contributing an assist.

England may not emerge from this international break as the odds-on favorite to win the next major tournament, but they have certainly established themselves as a team nobody will want to face.

And that is precisely the dynamic, optimistic England that supporters have wanted to see, including Thomas Tuchel himself.

Rather than allowing the disappointment against Spain to derail their progress, England responded with confidence, determination and increasingly impressive football.

Kane was central to that response.

His goalscoring was outstanding, but so was his leadership, his work rate and his willingness to contribute throughout the pitch.

The international break also saw Kane equal Peter Shilton’s record of 125 appearances for England. He now has 91 international goals, further extending his record as England’s all-time leading scorer.

It was another reminder of why Kane remains such an exceptional professional and why his influence cannot be measured exclusively through his goalscoring statistics.

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Mbappé has enjoyed a fantastic year, and I do not wish to diminish his accomplishments. His performances at the World Cup and his remarkable goalscoring record for Real Madrid made him a thoroughly deserving candidate.

But taken in totality, I now believe Kane’s year was better.

And with Mbappé’s injury limiting his participation during the international break, I do not believe there is sufficient time remaining for him to close the gap.

Kane has combined historic goalscoring with exceptional all-around play, consistency and leadership for both club and country. Across the 2025/26 season, he scored an extraordinary 73 goals in 63 appearances for Bayern Munich and England.

His contribution to Bayern’s success and England’s increasingly encouraging trajectory has established the strongest case for football’s most prestigious individual award.

The last Englishman to win the Ballon d’Or was Michael Owen in 2001, three years after his unforgettable wonder goal against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup.

Twenty-five years later, another English striker has produced a season worthy of joining him.

The World Cup did not “come home” to England in 2026, and ultimately, that is what mattered most.

But I believe the Ballon d’Or will return to an English player for the first time in 25 years.

The controversy began after Ronaldo was substituted earlier than he would have liked in Portugal’s match against Wales. In the subsequent encounter with Norway, he was asked to warm up during the second half, apparently with the expectation that he would enter the match. Despite spending much of the half preparing to come on, Ronaldo never made it onto the pitch.

Visibly frustrated, he left without acknowledging the supporters, setting off a confrontation that would escalate dramatically over the following days.

Jesus subsequently announced that Ronaldo would not start Portugal’s next match against Denmark and delivered a defiant press conference emphasising his authority as manager. Nobody, he declared in substance, not even footballers of the stature of Pelé, Diego Maradona or Cristiano Ronaldo, was entitled to dictate his decisions.

Much of the media embraced his remarks, applauding the manager for asserting his authority over an aging superstar. Ronaldo, meanwhile, departed the national team camp, promising that he would eventually explain his reasons to the Portuguese people.

And, predictably, those in the media who seem to find reasons to criticise Ronaldo even after he scores for his country wasted little time seizing upon the opportunity. The familiar narrative of an arrogant, entitled footballer unwilling to accept his diminishing role was quickly established.

My interpretation of these events is very different.

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To understand why, it is worth considering the circumstances surrounding Jorge Jesus’s appointment and the manager he replaced.

Roberto Martínez had been criticised by sections of the media for his positive, optimistic and uplifting approach to managing Cristiano Ronaldo. Rather than treating the country’s greatest footballer as an inconvenience, Martínez sought to incorporate him into his teams and make the most of what he could still contribute.

That is precisely how a manager should approach a player of Ronaldo’s stature.

I consider Roberto Martínez an exceptional manager, and his work with Belgium provides an important illustration of why tournament results do not always tell the full story of a manager’s performance.

Belgium did not win a major trophy under Martínez, but they certainly played well enough to deserve one. Their 2018 World Cup semifinal against France was an exceptionally competitive match, and I would argue that Belgium may even have slightly gotten the better of the overall contest. France ultimately prevailed, but had Belgium emerged victorious, I believe they would have gone on to win the World Cup. They subsequently dismantled England in the third-place match, completing an impressive tournament that deserved considerable recognition.

Martínez was a positive, forward-thinking manager who brought out the best in an exceptionally talented group of players. I have written previously about how far a team advances in a tournament not necessarily being an accurate reflection of its performance.

That distinction applies to his time with Portugal as well.

Portugal failed to win a difficult World Cup group, leaving them with the unfortunate prospect of encountering Spain in the round of 16. Spain went on to win the tournament, and Portugal played them as competitively as virtually anyone did, perhaps more so. Portugal ultimately lost 1–0, but losing a closely contested match against the eventual champions is hardly evidence of managerial incompetence.

Nevertheless, Martínez moved on, and a couple of months later, Jorge Jesus arrived.

Rather than continuing the positive approach of his predecessor, Jesus appears to have recognised an opportunity to establish his authority by appealing to the anti-Ronaldo sentiment that has become increasingly prevalent in sections of the football media.

Jesus’s grandstanding about how nobody – not Pelé, not Diego Maradona, not Cristiano Ronaldo – is bigger than his country or entitled to tell a national team manager what to do has become the defining narrative of his dispute with Portugal’s greatest footballer.

But that assertion is simply not true. In fact, we have a real-life example that has just played out, directly refuting it.

That example is Lionel Messi.

Messi has effectively been given carte blanche regarding his involvement with the Argentine national team. He has been permitted to conclude his international career entirely on his own terms, and manager Lionel Scaloni has made it clear that Argentina’s No. 10 shirt remains his and that he is welcome to return whenever he wishes.

And I would not be surprised if he does.

One can certainly debate whether Messi’s and Ronaldo’s respective legacies are equivalent. But the principle remains the same. Cristiano Ronaldo belongs among the greatest footballers in history, regardless of where one places him relative to Messi.

He should appear on any credible all-time top-ten list. On my own, he ranks somewhere between fifth and tenth, behind players such as Johan Cruyff and Romário, but comfortably ahead of Zinedine Zidane, Michel Platini and Zico.

Which makes Jorge Jesus’s sweeping declaration all the more absurd.

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Who exactly is this guy?

This is not Pep Guardiola or Sir Alex Ferguson. This is a relatively new manager of the Portuguese national team, a man whose career included managing in the Saudi league, where Ronaldo himself reportedly helped facilitate his appointment.

That is not to suggest Jesus is not a good manager. But his declaration is absurd, particularly coming from someone attempting to establish his authority at the expense of the greatest footballer in his country’s history.

And the more this controversy has unfolded, the more of a clown Jesus has made of himself in his apparent efforts to elevate his own standing by humiliating Portugal’s greatest footballer.

I think not.

There is also an unmistakable double standard in the manner in which Messi and Ronaldo are treated.

I have discussed this in previous articles, and it remains evident in the media’s willingness to scrutinize virtually every expression of frustration from Ronaldo while overlooking similar conduct from Messi.

Consider Messi pointing his finger directly in the face of Major League Soccer (MLS) commissioner Don Garber following Inter Miami’s Campeones Cup victory in September. The incident was captured on video, with Messi repeatedly approaching Garber during what appeared to be a heated exchange. The circumstances that prompted the confrontation remain unclear.

Yet the incident hardly generated the sustained condemnation that so often accompanies Ronaldo’s expressions of frustration.

I do not raise the incident to condemn Messi. I raise it because the contrast is instructive. Messi is afforded a level of latitude that Ronaldo frequently is not.

And to some extent, that is understandable.

Messi won the World Cup with Argentina. Ronaldo has not achieved the same with Portugal, and the difference inevitably influences how their respective international careers are remembered. But it should not determine whether one player is afforded respect while another becomes a convenient target for ridicule.

There is room to recognise Messi’s accomplishments without diminishing Ronaldo’s, just as there is room to acknowledge Ronaldo’s shortcomings without treating every controversy involving him as an opportunity to humiliate one of the greatest players the sport has ever produced.

Ronaldo subsequently released a lengthy statement detailing, in his own words, circumstances that had already been widely reported in the press. His explanation had initially emerged through accounts from those close to him, but his own substantial statement provided a considerably more detailed account of how the controversy developed.

I have no particular reason to believe that his account is untrue, although I recognise that we have heard only his side of the story.

According to Ronaldo’s account, Jesus initially agreed that he would sit out Portugal’s matches against Norway and Denmark to manage his fitness. On the day of the Norway match, however, Jesus reportedly told Ronaldo that he would play approximately 30 minutes.

Ronaldo subsequently warmed up throughout much of the second half without ever entering the match.

That alone would understandably frustrate a player of his stature, particularly one who believed he had been given a specific assurance regarding his involvement.

But the situation did not end there.

Ronaldo described a subsequent meeting involving Jesus, his adviser Tiago Craveiro and Al Nassr sporting director Simão Coutinho, during which an agreement was allegedly reached concerning how the manager would publicly explain the situation.

According to Ronaldo, eight points were prepared and agreed upon, establishing that he had not demanded playing time, had respected the manager’s decisions and had been treated unfairly when asked to warm up without ultimately entering the match.

There is something a little quirky about Ronaldo negotiating those eight points, particularly his desire to establish publicly that he was wanted by the national team. But it is disgraceful that his manager put him in a position where he felt compelled to have such a conversation in the first place.

In fact, those points are precisely what Jesus needed to communicate publicly following the events that had unfolded. Ronaldo should never have been required to negotiate a statement establishing his professionalism, loyalty and standing within the national team.

Ultimately, Ronaldo chose to share these details with the public, and I give him considerable credit for that transparency. I believe him when he says he has presented his whole truth. It is a strong statement from an iconic, high-performing footballer standing up for himself against what increasingly appears to me to be a small, manipulative and dishonourable personality in Jorge Jesus.

Instead of delivering the agreed-upon clarification, Jesus appeared at his press conference and made remarks that, according to Ronaldo, bore little resemblance to what had been discussed privately.

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Jesus has denied making the agreement Ronaldo describes. But based on everything I have seen from both men, I am inclined to believe that it is Jesus, rather than Ronaldo, who is being dishonest about what transpired.

I certainly do not possess any particular insight into Jorge Jesus’s private thinking, and I would not pretend otherwise. But we can evaluate his conduct and the circumstances surrounding it.

If Ronaldo’s account is substantially accurate, the sequence of events raises an extremely troubling possibility. It suggests to me that the situation may have been deliberately arranged to humiliate Ronaldo, first through the manner in which his involvement was handled and then through the manager’s public remarks.

Such an approach could also serve to curry favour with younger players who would naturally welcome increased opportunities within the national team.

Again, that is an interpretation of the events, not something I can establish as fact. But if that interpretation is correct, it represents an extraordinarily destructive form of leadership.

A manager who elevates himself by diminishing a national icon, while potentially encouraging competing factions within his squad, is creating precisely the kind of toxic dynamic that can destroy a team’s culture.

And that is the larger issue here.

This is no longer simply a disagreement about whether Cristiano Ronaldo should start a particular match, appear as a substitute or remain part of Portugal’s plans. It is a question of leadership, organizational culture and the responsibilities that come with managing a national team.

There is nothing admirable about attacking the icons who have helped establish an organization’s identity and success.

The manner in which the New England Patriots organisation, beginning with Robert Kraft, treated Bill Belichick provides a particularly unfortunate example. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding a departure or a changing role, publicly diminishing the individuals responsible for an organization’s greatest achievements is a shameful approach to leadership.

These are precisely the kinds of slimy, opportunistic and manipulative shenanigans that destroy organizational cultures.

It is not something I respect, and it is certainly not something I want to see from someone entrusted with leading the Portuguese national team.

I have previously written about managerial conduct that I consider a fireable offense. In my mind, this situation falls into that category.

Based on the events as they have been presented, Jorge Jesus is not someone I would want leading the Portuguese national team.

Yet removing him now presents another serious problem.

If Portugal dismisses Jesus following this controversy, it risks reinforcing the very narrative that has been used against Ronaldo: that the country’s greatest player is exercising his influence to remove a manager who refused to accommodate him.

It could easily be portrayed as Ronaldo forcing out a coach who represented the interests of younger players in favour of someone more willing to defer to him. That would only deepen the division.

And a pro-Ronaldo versus anti-Ronaldo dynamic within Portugal’s national team would be an absolute disaster.

Players should not feel compelled to choose sides between their manager and the most celebrated footballer in their country’s history. Nor should the manager create circumstances in which younger players might view Ronaldo’s continued involvement as something they must oppose to advance their own opportunities.

This is precisely why the responsibility for resolving the controversy rests with Jesus.

He created the situation, and he has an obligation to his country to correct it.

Ronaldo concluded his lengthy statement by emphasizing that he had told the truth about the circumstances surrounding his departure. He also acknowledged that leaving the national team camp was wrong and took responsibility for that decision.

Personally, I am not so sure that it was wrong of him to leave. At a minimum, I am glad that Ronaldo stood up for himself after Jorge Jesus’s shameless shenanigans.

We know that Ronaldo takes tremendous pride in himself and his accomplishments, and that pride has undoubtedly contributed to some of his controversies and the satisfaction so many seem to take in seeing him fail. These are the same people now applauding Jorge Jesus. Yet, in my mind, it is Jesus’s character that really ought to be examined.

People can learn from their mistakes, however, and given the untenable mess Jesus has created, he needs to learn quickly.

There is another important element of Ronaldo’s statement that deserves recognition.

He went beyond merely acknowledging that his departure was inappropriate. He expressly accepted that his conduct warranted punishment and even argued that his status as captain should be considered an aggravating factor.

I disagree with him on that point.

Suspending Cristiano Ronaldo under these circumstances is not the appropriate response, particularly when the national team is already confronting a controversy that threatens to divide its players and supporters.

The Portuguese Football Federation has now provisionally suspended Ronaldo and initiated disciplinary proceedings concerning his departure from the national team camp.

That is an unfortunate development, and one I believe the federation should reconsider.

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Ironically, Ronaldo’s willingness to accept punishment provides the federation with precisely the opportunity it needs to resolve this controversy positively.

He has acknowledged his conduct, accepted responsibility and expressed his willingness to face the consequences. In doing so, he has opened the door for the national team to respond graciously.

The appropriate response, in my view, is for the federation and Jesus to make clear that no suspension is necessary, that Ronaldo remains wanted and needed, and that Portugal looks forward to welcoming him back into the team.

That would not represent Ronaldo dictating terms to the national team. Quite the opposite. It would demonstrate an organization responding constructively to a player who has acknowledged his responsibilities and extended an opportunity for reconciliation.

And it would allow everyone involved to move forward without further humiliation or division.

Jesus’s subsequent comments suggesting that he has told Cristiano Ronaldo he needs him by his side indicate that he may now recognize the necessity of repairing the relationship.

I suspect that this necessity has been emphasized to him by his employers, the leadership of the Portuguese Football Federation, as it absolutely should have been.

Federation president Pedro Proença has publicly expressed his desire to welcome Ronaldo back into the national team, an encouraging indication that Portugal’s leadership recognizes the importance of resolving this controversy rather than allowing it to become a permanent rupture.

That is a good step forward, and Jesus should be encouraged to take several more.

It is now incumbent upon Jesus to demonstrate through his actions that Ronaldo remains a valued and important part of Portugal’s future.

There is a broader principle here concerning how successful organizations treat the individuals who have defined them.

Honouring greats is an important part of building a lasting culture.

That does not mean every decision involving a legendary player will necessarily produce the best immediate tactical result. There may be occasions when accommodating such a player requires compromises that would not otherwise be made.

But leadership is not exclusively about maximising the next result. It is also about preserving the values, relationships and institutional identity that allow an organisation to remain successful over time.

When an organization begins humiliating the people responsible for its greatest achievements, it sends a terrible message to everyone who follows them.

Portugal should understand that better than almost anyone.

Cristiano Ronaldo has represented his country for more than two decades, helping transform Portugal into one of international football’s most prominent and successful nations.

He has given the Portuguese national team an identity recognised throughout the world, and his pursuit of 1,000 career goals remains one of the most extraordinary individual stories in the sport.

That pursuit should not become an excuse to diminish him.

Nor should his age automatically disqualify him from continuing to play an important role.

Ronaldo remains an exceptional athlete, and while his responsibilities may evolve, I believe he is still capable of making meaningful contributions at the highest level.

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There is still a path forward, but it requires Jesus to recognize that his responsibility extends beyond asserting his authority.

He must restore Ronaldo’s standing within the team, eliminate the possibility of competing factions and make clear that Portugal’s future will not be built upon diminishing the player who has contributed more to its international success than anyone else.

And I believe the appropriate course is to bring Ronaldo fully back into the fold and re-establish him as Portugal’s central talisman.

That does not mean ignoring the future or denying opportunities to younger players. It means recognizing that Ronaldo remains capable of contributing while ensuring that the transition toward the next European Championship takes place within a positive and unified environment.

There is still an opportunity to build that future around Ronaldo’s experience, competitive determination and extraordinary standing within Portuguese football.

But it will require the manager to correct the damage he has already caused.

If Jesus cannot do that, then Portugal should find a manager who understands, at the very least, the importance of treating the country’s greatest footballers with respect.

Jorge Jesus created this controversy. His conduct has threatened to establish a destructive dynamic within the Portuguese national team, and removing him now could exacerbate the very division that his actions have encouraged.

That is the unfortunate position in which Portugal finds itself.

It is Jorge Jesus, not Cristiano Ronaldo, who is to blame for Portugal’s mess — and entirely his responsibility to make it right.

The familiar caricature of Ronaldo as a man lacking self-awareness is also difficult to reconcile with his own words. He has acknowledged that this will probably be his final year playing professional football. His ambition, I believe, is to reach the extraordinary milestone of 1,000 career goals, and I suspect he had hoped to accomplish that while still representing Portugal. Depending on the international calendar and how events unfold, Portuguese football would do well to accommodate that ambition wherever reasonably possible.

As I have written previously, Lionel Messi’s peak with Argentina ultimately outlasted Ronaldo’s with Portugal. Messi won the World Cup and firmly established his case as the greatest footballer of all time. At this stage, Ronaldo, or anyone else, would be hard-pressed to reopen that debate.

But there is one important caveat: Ronaldo’s story with Portugal is not finished.

I do not believe it is a coincidence that Ronaldo announced his intention to continue representing Portugal on the very day Messi’s international career came to an end. While Ronaldo will be hard-pressed to overturn the historical comparison between them, his own story continues, and I would not bet against him adding a few more positive twists to his extraordinary list of accomplishments for Portugal.

Indeed, I would not be surprised if this entire controversy ultimately reinvigorates Ronaldo, perhaps even persuading him that this need not be his final year playing football.

I look forward to seeing a motivated, invigorated CR7 take the field for Portugal the next time they play.

And I certainly would not bet against Cristiano Ronaldo writing a few more memorable chapters before he finally decides to hang up his cleats for the Portuguese national team.

Three consecutive World Cups without qualification has shown a drastic decline in quality, creating a culture of losing among the national team. This was changed briefly in 2021, where Roberto Mancini brought the country their second ever Euros victory, as well as breaking the record for the longest unbeaten streak in international football history at the time, going 37 matches without a defeat. Three years after his resignation, he aims to reignite Italian football’s greatness.

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To better understand Mancini’s current stint as Italy manager, it is necessary to first analyse his previous run, particularly what transformed the squad from a struggling side into an unstoppable force. It is equally important to look at what went wrong in the latter half of his spell as the team’s leader, and why they were unable to qualify for the 2022 World Cup. From his appointment in 2018, Roberto Mancini shifted the national side to a modernised 4-3-3 style, as well as placing faith in younger players that could enhance Italy’s rebuild and were ultimately pivotal in creating a new identity that forced themselves into 2021 Euros final and left as the victors.

However, it was his reliance on these younger players that resulted in failing to qualify for the 2022 World Cup, as Italy became reliant on these players over time, and ultimately found themselves lacking the squad depth sufficient to maintain their dominance, particularly with regards to finding the goals needed to win a game.

The failures of Italy in the aftermath of the Euros victory were largely out of Mancini’s control, to some extent, with institutional factors resulting in a lack of talent being produced and available for the squad, forcing the coach’s hand into an unfavourable position, as he was left without high-level attacking players.

A strained relationship between Roberto Mancini and the former president of Italy’s Football Federation, Gabriele Gravina, ultimately resulted in Mancini’s resignation in 2023, with a lack of trust between the two being cited as a key reason for this. The federation had restructured the national team’s setup prior to Mancini’s resignation, resulting in a change of backroom staff, as well as claims from the head coach that he did not have the autonomy he felt like he needed to be able to further develop the team, and take them to the next level.

This brings us to the 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign, where failure saw the resignation of Gravina as president, as well as the loss of two managers through the qualifiers, the first being Luciano Spalletti following the first round, and the second being Gennaro Gattuso after the final defeat. After a chaotic and stressful few years since his departure, Roberto Mancini has now returned as the national side’s head coach, as he now aims to recreate the magic of his first spell, while improving it and fixing the mistakes from his previous attempt.

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Tactically, Mancini’s style of play is largely unchanged, with much of his philosophy remaining in place, as he carries forward the 4-3-3 formation, though more fluid than ever, utilising Bastoni in a key role during possession to push an aggressive press that allows the midfield to ultimately draw opponents out and create space for the attack. It is a proven method that Mancini has used in the past, but with a new group of fresh faces, the question is if the squad is capable of deploying the tactics effectively.

This is where Mancini’s growth is best seen, as he is no longer tied so strongly to his old ways, now being more open to adapting and evolving where necessary, as the starting XI is not as strict and set in stone. In the recent international break, the Italy squad has featured nine players receiving their first call-ups for the team, as these younger players will be essential in the long-term success, rather than the short-term success that Mancini’s first spell oversaw, with a focus on a wide variety of players instead of a smaller, more focused selection, allowing the squad to have greater depth.

This large group of players provides Mancini with the opportunity for experimentation, utilising the nations league matches to identify the key strengths of each individual, and developing the team’s plans to fit the abilities of the players. This will ultimately improve upon his initial stint as Italy manager by being more open to changing the starting lineup, as well as less reluctant to change tactics if necessary to suit the individuals that are available, making injuries less critical and prevent the side from falling into another crisis.

Despite it being early into Mancini’s latest spell, some elements of success and improvements are already being seen, as Italy saw an impressive 4-1 victory over Türkiye, as well as holding a strong position against a powerful France which culminated in a 1-1 draw. This demonstrates that the manager has already made an impact, changing the nation’s identity into one of winners, as he now intends on developing the team into one that can rival the best at the upcoming 2028 Euros.

However, the real question everyone wants to know, is can Roberto Mancini take Italy to their first World Cup since 2014? With four years to go until the next tournament, it is difficult to say how the squad will look by then, though with a wide array of young talent, Italy may be entering a new golden generation, with players such as Giorgio Scalvini, Riccardo Calafiori, and the Esposito brothers, Francesco and Sebastiano, likely to become major stars for the team, along with the existing key individuals such as Alessandro Bastoni and Gianluigi Donnarumma.

Time will tell if Mancini can accomplish the goals set out, but it’s certain that if this team can reach their full potential and put their coach’s tactics into play, then there is no reason why Italy can’t return to their former greatness as one of the top national sides in the world.

After a lengthy and drawn-out investigation, an independent commission ruled against the club, with a range of sanctions available to them.

What has the commission decided?

The panel found City guilty of every charge relating to financial breaches across a nine-season period, plus most of the accusations about failing to cooperate with the inquiry. According to the Premier League, the club arranged contracts with commercial partners that were intentionally designed to inflate its income, and it filed accounts that hid the true picture.

Sanctions will be determined at a later hearing, with City now expected to appeal. The club has come out and stated that it’s disappointed and surprised by the findings.

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Fines and points deductions

The Premier League purposely chose not to set fixed punishments for financial offences, which gives the commission considerable discretion. A points deduction is widely regarded as the most likely outcome, following the precedent set when Everton and Nottingham Forest were docked points for profit and sustainability breaches.

A substantial fine could accompany it. Should the points deduction be heavy, it will severely affect City’s chances of success, which will be reflected by football betting odds online, with expectations shifting accordingly.

The most severe possibilities

The range of sanctions extends much further in the City case. Expulsion from the Premier League, while technically possible, remains improbable. Between those extremes sit heavier fines, larger deductions and other restrictions the commission may consider proportionate to a breach spanning almost a decade. The panel’s conclusion that the club clearly intended to circumvent the rules may weigh heavily when it decides how firm it should be.

Appeals and compensation claims

City are expected to appeal and have suggested so themselves, and that process could postpone any final resolution considerably. The club has been in a similar position before after UEFA banned it from European competition for two seasons and fined it €30 million in 2020, with the ban being overturned on appeal. Rival clubs are reportedly already exploring compensation for lost income, which will potentially prolong the legal fallout long after any sporting sanctions are settled.

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Why this case matters for English football

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters described the case as the most significant in the competition’s history, arguing that City systematically broke the rules for close to a decade. The outcome will therefore shape how firmly financial regulations are enforced against clubs of every size. Supporters of rivals who finished behind City during the period in question, or lost to them in cup finals, will be watching closely, while the club’s fans face a prolonged spell of uncertainty.

What happens next?

The immediate focus will be on the sanctions and an appeal from City. If they challenge the decision, which is highly likely, it will shape the timetable, since any challenge would prolong a process the Premier League has stated it wants to resolve as soon as possible. Until a hearing determining the sanctions occurs, what happens next, and what happens to City, remain a bit of an unknown.

The guilty verdict has settled the facts as far as the commission is concerned, so it’s no longer just rumours about what’s played out. But as for the consequences, they’re still to be decided on.

The standout game is on Sunday, as Liverpool go head-to-head with table-topping Manchester City at Anfield. Read on as we preview the big match.

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City sweating on Haaland’s fitness

One of the key Liverpool vs Manchester City match details ahead of the game surrounds the fitness of City’s star striker Erling Braut Haaland.

The 26-year-old played the full game in each of Norway’s first three Nations League fixtures, before asking to be substituted in their fourth outing against Portugal.

This sparked talk that Haaland could be doubtful for the trip to Liverpool, but Norway manager Stale Solbakken subsequently eased those fears.

He revealed he had a discussion with the striker about his heavy workload before the Portugal game and that his withdrawal was pre-planned.

“He was tired against Wales,” Solbakken said. “That’s why we had a heart-to-heart conversation yesterday. We went through the possible options.

“He might have played the last 45 minutes against Portugal. That was a discussion. But he has very bad vibes and feelings about it. I am very pleased that he managed to pull out sixty good minutes.”

City will hope that Haaland can continue his recent excellent form against Liverpool this weekend. He scored in both league meetings last term.

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Goals could be on the cards this weekend

This will be the first league fixture between the two clubs since March 2015 with neither Jurgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola in the dugout.

Andoni Iraola has made a steady start to life at Liverpool, guiding them to two wins and three draws in their first five league outings this term.

New City boss Enzo Maresca boasts a more impressive record having overseen five consecutive victories at the start of the new campaign.

Recent fixtures between the two clubs have been hugely entertaining. Since their goalless draw in October 2018, the 15 subsequent league meetings have averaged 3.1 goals per game.

The away side has triumphed in two of the last three Premier League games between the clubs – as many as the previous 32 fixtures.

The Reds have drawn each of their last four home league games. They have only gone five or more matches without a home win in the competition on three previous occasions.

City are unbeaten in their last ten away league matches (W6, D4), which bodes well for their chances of maintaining their unbeaten record this weekend.

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City fancied to keep rolling at Liverpool

Liverpool are unbeaten in nine matches across all competitions, but they have looked unconvincing in the Premier League this term.

Nottingham Forest (2-2) and Fulham (0-0) have both held the Reds at Anfield, and City possess far more quality than both of those clubs.

Both clubs will head into the game with several players sidelined through injury, but City’s greater squad depth could be a decisive factor.

City have scored 13 league goals this season and will fancy their chances of adding to their tally against a defence which has looked shaky at times.

Jeremy Jacquet has been their best performer at the back this season, but he could miss the game after sustaining a hamstring strain on international duty.

If the Frenchman misses the game, Ronaldo Araujuo is expected to partner Virgil van Dijk at centre-back. Haaland could cause them plenty of problems.

City triumphed 2-1 on their last visit to Anfield in February and are strongly fancied to pick up three points again this weekend.

But ironically, it was the 100 English supporters who were no doubt in dreamland today as they witnessed England deliver a historic 7–0 defeat of Croatia.

One particular clip has followed Thomas Tuchel throughout his tenure as England manager.

Before he ever took charge of the team, Tuchel was asked about Gareth Southgate’s England. He spoke about a side that lacked an identity and offered a vision of something different: a team that played to win rather than one that played not to lose. This, he told us, was supposed to be the team to beat.

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It was exactly the message many England supporters wanted to hear. Ironically — and, from an English perspective, tragically — Tuchel’s first tournament at the helm ended up looking almost like a caricature of the Southgate teams he had criticised.

If you closed your eyes to who was standing on the touchline and simply looked at England’s performances and ultimate outcome at the World Cup, in spite of Tuchel’s superior messaging, much of the end product was painfully familiar. England consistently played down to lesser opponents before ultimately snatching defeat from the jaws of victory when they finally encountered a major one.

And that opponent just happened to be Argentina.

This was an opportunity to exorcise some of the oldest demons in English football. Argentina, England’s most iconic international nemesis. The Hand of God. Decades of controversy, heartbreak and history between two nations whose meetings have so often produced moments that live far beyond the tournaments in which they occurred.

And in that semifinal, Tuchel didn’t just retreat. He went one step further than even Southgate. England ended the match with six defenders on the pitch. Six. Not even Southgate would have done that against Argentina.

It was the retreat of all retreats, and Argentina duly overpowered England, scoring twice and ending the World Cup dream.

But I digress.

Last week, following England’s 3–2 defeat against Spain, I wrote an optimistic appraisal of what I considered to be a forward-thinking and encouraging performance. It also illustrated an important distinction I have made when evaluating both Southgate and Tuchel.

Football matches can come down to the most fortuitous of bounces, a refereeing decision or a matter of inches. Those moments determine results, but when evaluating a team and its manager, we should be willing to look beyond them. And that standard has to apply equally when England benefit from the bounce and win as it does when the bounce goes against them and they lose.

Against Spain, it went against them.

Harry Kane slipped slightly while aggressively striking a potentially decisive penalty and watched the ball crash against the crossbar. I actually liked the optimism of the attempt: high and hard, the way a former England talisman so often approached his penalties. On another day it flies into the net, and what became a disappointing defeat might instead have been remembered as a signature England victory.

That bounce of the football mattered enormously to the result. It did not change my overall appraisal of the performance. I was encouraged. England played more freely and aggressively. They played on the front foot. They looked like a team attempting to beat Spain rather than one preoccupied with avoiding defeat.

There was, of course, an important piece of context. The Nations League is not the World Cup. It is not the Euros. Playing with that freedom here is not the same thing as doing it with a World Cup semifinal hanging in the balance.

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The second match against Czechia did not provide much additional material for evaluation. Most probably would agree that the match should have been easier than it was, especially in light of England playing with a man advantage for much of it.

Nevertheless, it was a victory and a clean sheet, with the names you want to see on the scoresheet. Gordon and Kane again supplied the goals, as they had in the first match against Spain. Gordon’s remarkable streak of goal contributions for England has now reached seven matches, and he is emerging as a bona fide star for club and country, rounding out an attacking trio with Kane and Bellingham that gives England plenty to be excited about.

And despite the horrific manner in which the World Cup ended, along with some underwhelming performances along the way, there were certainly bright spots. Perhaps none was brighter than England’s 4–2 opening victory over Croatia.

There were slip-ups in the first half that allowed Croatia to score twice, but England’s second-half performance gave us a glimpse of the front-foot team Tuchel had promised us.

That match was a source of optimism, but today was the stuff of dreams.

Aside from last weekend’s implications for the table in this group, the past week also saw a wild swing in the Ballon d’Or odds, trending away from Kane and towards Lamine Yamal. No doubt the events which unfolded in that match played a large role. It will be interesting to see where those odds sit once the dust settles on today’s performance, led by captain Harry Kane.

Kane served as the catalyst, starting the party early with a decisive strike after eight minutes following a slick through ball from Bellingham. Bellingham himself returned to score the second just 13 minutes later, Gordon continued his remarkable run of goal contributions, and Saka made it four before halftime.

Kane added another after the break to complete his brace and later turned provider for Saka, finishing with two goals and an assist. Saka’s second and a late goal from Morgan Rogers rounded out the historic 7–0 scoreline. Kane now has four goals through England’s opening three Nations League matches, adding to his historic calendar year for club and country.

Tuchel previously took umbrage when questioned about England’s record against top-10 nations. His response was that nobody seemed to mention that statistic when England actually won one.

Point taken.

Let the record show that England have now beaten top-10 nations on seven of their last 16 opportunities, which is nothing to scoff at. And credit where it’s due for Tuchel: four wins from six opportunities under his management, which, excluding context, is certainly a good record.

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The lingering question is how England will fare against this level of opposition in the latter stages of tournaments. And while I’m not sure how much longer Croatia will remain a top-10 nation, they are nevertheless a quality opponent, and this was a historic and emphatically positive result.

I mentioned after the Spain game that losing early in a tournament can sometimes ultimately be beneficial. In a forgiving group stage, England had the opportunity to absorb that defeat without allowing it to define them. Perhaps we are seeing that play out here. England lost to Spain while playing positively, got the necessary victory against Czechia, and have now gone to Croatia and won 7–0.

Assuming England take care of business in their next two matches, based on the goal differentials as they currently stand, it seems increasingly likely that they will travel to Spain for the final match of the group stage with an opportunity to win the group.

The Nations League is not the World Cup. It is not the Euros. But it is a great opportunity to watch our country compete at the highest level, and as this initial trip concludes, there is a lot to be excited about.

And I, for one, am excited to see what Kane, Bellingham, Gordon and Tuchel’s England deliver next.

Increasingly, this is starting to look like the team Thomas Tuchel told us he intended his England to be: a team that plays to win rather than playing not to lose.

And perhaps, the team to beat.

The charges cover a range of alleged breaches, including failures to provide accurate financial information, matters relating to player and manager remuneration, UEFA financial regulations, Premier League profitability and sustainability rules, and failures to cooperate with the league’s investigation.

There are some important qualifications before going any further. The full judgment has not been published. No sanction has yet been announced. Manchester City maintain their position and are expected to appeal. The club says the process remains ongoing. And I certainly haven’t spent the last several years digging through Manchester City’s accounts. I haven’t examined the evidence in anything approaching sufficient detail to independently declare what did or didn’t happen, nor am I going to pretend otherwise.

So everything that follows presupposes one thing: that what is presently being reported is substantially accurate and that these findings ultimately survive the appeals process. If they do, the punishment should be severe. But I strongly disagree with one of the most obvious proposed solutions: do not rewrite history.

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You cannot manufacture an alternative past

There will understandably be calls to strip Manchester City of titles and award them retroactively to whichever club finished second. I don’t think the Premier League should do that. There is precedent elsewhere in sport for vacating accomplishments after the fact, but football should be extremely reluctant to establish a precedent in which championships can be administratively reassigned years after everybody went home.

For one thing, we cannot possibly know what would have happened. Take Diego Maradona and the Hand of God in 1986. Suppose the referee sees it, the goal is disallowed and Maradona is sent off. Does England beat a ten-man Argentina? Yeah, probably. But we don’t know. And even if England do win, they then have to play Belgium and, if they get through that, presumably West Germany in the final. Every match unfolds differently, every tactical decision changes and every subsequent event occurs in a world altered by what happened before it. You cannot change one enormous variable and confidently assume everything that follows remains the same.

The same problem exists with Manchester City. Manchester United lost the 2011/12 Premier League title on goal difference. Liverpool finished one point behind City in 2018/19 and again in 2021/22. It is incredibly tempting to remove City, move everybody else up one position and declare justice served, but that isn’t history. Those seasons unfolded with Manchester City in them. Teams approached matches according to the table in front of them. Managers made decisions based upon results that had already happened. Transfers were made. Managers were hired and fired. Players experienced pressure, confidence, fatigue and injuries. Change Manchester City and you change everything downstream.

We cannot know with certainty who would have won those championships, and even if we could somehow approximate it, I don’t think we should rewrite them anyway.

Football needs finality

There is a broader reason for that. I think retroactively changing championships years later would damage the Premier League brand considerably and establish a horrible precedent. We already hear complaints about VAR taking away some of the joy of a goal. The ball hits the net and everyone celebrates, but there is now sometimes that moment of hesitation while we wait to see whether somebody was offside, whether there was a handball or whether VAR is going to intervene.

Now take that concept to an entirely different level. Imagine introducing the idea that a championship you watched your club win might not really be theirs because lawyers and accountants could revisit the season five, ten or fifteen years later and officially declare somebody else champion. Football should not go down that road. Sport requires a degree of finality.

That does not mean violations discovered later should go unpunished. It means the punishment should address the violation rather than pretending the violation never occurred. A crime cannot be undone. This is not a criminal case, and violations of Premier League rules are not crimes, but the principle is the same. When a wrong has occurred, the legal system does not possess a time machine. It determines responsibility, imposes consequences and, where appropriate, attempts to compensate the people who were harmed. That is the model I would apply here.

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Don’t use counterfactuals to rewrite history; use them to calculate Damages

This is where the distinction becomes important. I don’t believe we can say Liverpool definitely would have won a particular championship without Manchester City. What we can potentially do is estimate the probability that they would have, and that probability has economic value. The same principle can apply to Manchester United, Champions League qualification, league position, European progression, commercial opportunities and other identifiable sources of revenue.

And this is not entirely theoretical. Premier League clubs are already reported to be considering compensation claims following the reported City decision. Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham are among those reported to have preserved their ability to pursue compensation, with potential claims involving lost earnings and lost opportunities. That is where the counterfactual belongs.

I am willing to use a counterfactual to help determine damages. I am not willing to use one to manufacture history. Experts can attempt to calculate probabilities. Lawyers can argue causation. Economists can quantify losses. Manchester City can challenge those calculations. Independent commissions and, where applicable, courts or tribunals can decide what can actually be proven. It would be enormously complicated, but complexity is not a reason to ignore legitimate damage.

If a club can demonstrate that Manchester City’s violations materially reduced its opportunity to win a championship, qualify for the Champions League, progress in Europe or earn additional revenue, there should be a process for translating that lost opportunity into economic damages where the applicable rules and law permit it. The consequences need not stop with whichever club happened to finish second. Competitive harm travels through a league table. One club misses a championship, another potentially misses the Champions League, another loses European football and another finishes one position lower. The farther down that chain we travel, the harder causation becomes to establish and the smaller the potential damages are likely to become. That’s exactly why we have legal processes. Let the evidence establish where the chain ends.

This could extend beyond England

There is also an obvious European dimension. Manchester City were not competing solely against English clubs during this period. They were participating in the Champions League, earning revenue and occupying places in European competition. That doesn’t mean UEFA should start retroactively handing Champions League matches or trophies to somebody else either. The same principle applies.

Don’t manufacture an alternative tournament. But where a legally sustainable claim can establish economic harm arising from an improperly obtained competitive advantage, it should be examined through whatever European, regulatory or legal process has jurisdiction. This could become an extraordinary domino chain, but that is unavoidable if the underlying violations ultimately prove to have been as extensive as presently reported.

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The money should go somewhere

There is another reason I prefer compensation to historical revision. Money paid as compensation doesn’t simply disappear. If Manchester City ultimately has to compensate other clubs for demonstrable losses, that injects capital back into the clubs that were harmed. That is far closer to restoration than changing the name engraved on an old trophy.

Don’t give Liverpool a championship years after the fact; compensate Liverpool for whatever losses it can actually establish. Don’t pretend another club played in a Champions League campaign it never participated in; determine whether it lost an identifiable economic opportunity and, if so, what that opportunity was reasonably worth. Apply the same principle throughout the league wherever legitimate damages can be demonstrated.

That creates an interesting corrective mechanism. Manchester City loses capital corresponding to harm attributed to its violations, while other clubs receive capital corresponding to losses they can establish. Instead of pretending to restore competitive balance retrospectively, you begin restoring it prospectively. There is already a recent Premier League precedent for substantial compensation arising from a financial-rule breach: Burnley were awarded £35.1 million from Everton after a commission determined that Everton’s breach of the Profitability and Sustainability Rules had given it a sporting advantage in the season Burnley were relegated. The City situation, if the reported findings survive appeal, is potentially on an entirely different scale.

The punishment should actually hurt

Compensation alone may not be sufficient. If Manchester City are ultimately found responsible for violations approaching the scale presently being reported, there must also be a serious sporting consequence. Relegation would be entirely appropriate in my view. Alternatively, an enormous points deduction could effectively produce the same result through the league table.

What cannot happen is a fine sufficiently small that an ownership group of Manchester City’s resources can simply absorb it as the cost of doing business. The consequences should materially affect the club, and substantial compensation could create consequences of its own. Manchester City have continued spending and building for the future. If the club eventually faces enormous financial liabilities alongside sporting sanctions, it could be forced into extremely difficult decisions. That might mean selling valuable players. It might mean several transfer windows in which City cannot operate from anything resembling its previous position of strength. Combined financial and sporting consequences could set the club back several seasons.

That would not be an arbitrary redistribution of Manchester City’s wealth. It would be the consequence of a process determining that identifiable parties suffered identifiable economic harm and are entitled to compensation. City got the trophies, and those stay. But preserving the trophies does not require preserving every economic advantage derived from them.

Leave the players out of it

There is also an important distinction between Manchester City as an institution, its manager and the players who actually went onto the pitch. For the players, this should have no impact whatsoever on how their performances are viewed unless evidence emerges that particular individuals were personally involved in wrongdoing. They weren’t responsible for constructing Manchester City’s financial arrangements. They went out and played football, produced the performances and moments that supporters remember, and there is no reason to retrospectively attach institutional wrongdoing to players who were neither involved in it nor aware of it.

Pep Guardiola’s legacy raises a slightly different question, not because I am suggesting Guardiola personally participated in financial wrongdoing, but because the circumstances under which a manager’s squad was constructed are inherently relevant when evaluating his accomplishments. Pep should still have the titles. But if it is ultimately established that Manchester City enjoyed a considerable competitive advantage in assembling and maintaining those squads because the club operated outside financial restrictions its competitors were required to observe, that is legitimate context when evaluating Guardiola against contemporaries such as Jürgen Klopp and José Mourinho.

That doesn’t erase Guardiola’s tactical accomplishments, nor does it prove another manager would have achieved what he achieved. It simply becomes part of the historical evaluation. The record book can tell us what Pep Guardiola won. Football supporters and historians can decide what weight to give the circumstances under which he won it. We don’t need the Premier League to make that judgment for us.

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Enforcement can strengthen the Premier League

Financial regulations in football are already controversial. There are supporters who believe the rules themselves entrench the established elite by making it extremely difficult for ambitious clubs outside that group to spend enough money to catch them. That is a legitimate debate, but it is a different debate. If the rules are bad, change them. While they exist, everybody has to obey them.

And if it is ultimately established that one of the richest and most successful clubs in world football egregiously violated financial restrictions that everybody else was expected to follow, that is appalling. Some will argue that imposing consequences on this scale would damage the Premier League’s reputation. I think mishandling it would be far more damaging.

A transparent process in which Manchester City receives every opportunity to appeal, the findings are eventually made clear, legitimate damages are assessed, injured parties are compensated and meaningful sporting sanctions are imposed demonstrates that nobody is bigger than the competition. That could ultimately strengthen the Premier League. The alternative — establishing enormous violations and then imposing a punishment that Manchester City’s ownership can shrug off — would tell supporters that the rules are meaningful only until somebody becomes wealthy enough to break them.

Don’t erase history, deal with it

That is ultimately my position. Don’t give Liverpool championships they didn’t celebrate, don’t give Manchester United 2012, don’t erase Agüero’s goal, and don’t tell players who had nothing to do with financial arrangements that their accomplishments disappeared years later. Most importantly, don’t pretend we can construct an alternative decade of English football and know how it would have unfolded. We can’t.

Presupposing these findings survive appeal, punish Manchester City severely. Calculate the economic harm as comprehensively as the evidence and applicable legal processes allow, compensate clubs that can establish legitimate losses, and allow those damages to inject capital back into the competition. Impose a sporting sanction commensurate with the seriousness of what was done, including relegation if appropriate.

And if the financial consequences are so severe that Manchester City must sell assets and spend several seasons rebuilding from a significantly weakened position, that is not rewriting history. That is living with its consequences.

The record should say what happened. The findings should say what was wrong. The punishment should address the damage. And history should be trusted to hold all three facts at once.

More importantly, they did not repeat the mistakes that cost them against Argentina in the World Cup semi-final. I didn’t expect them to, either. In fact, I had a feeling England would come out against Spain and play well, play positively and, perhaps most importantly, play free. At times, particularly early, they may have played a little too free.

England were nearly punished immediately. Just two minutes into the match, Marc Guéhi made an awful mistake and Lamine Yamal did exactly what a player of his quality is supposed to do, taking advantage and putting Spain ahead. England were fortunate that it remained only 1-0 for as long as it did. Had Ferran Torres worn his striking boots, as the English like to say, Spain could very easily have been two or even three goals ahead early. Yamal also had opportunities that he would undoubtedly like back. Spain repeatedly found ways to get behind England’s defence, creating a number of one-on-one, or close to one-on-one, situations.

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Those defensive lapses are concerning, and they will need to be addressed. But this was also a wild, open and thoroughly entertaining football match. It lacked the intensity of a true cup tie, which is worth remembering when evaluating both teams, but in the broadest sense I actually thought England looked the stronger side over the course of the match. Spain were unquestionably dangerous and, when it mattered, clinical in attack. But England threatened Spain to a degree that nobody managed during the World Cup we just watched.

One of the things I liked about the final four of this World Cup was that all four teams, to varying degrees, looked capable of beating one another on any given day. There was no invincible team standing above everybody else. Argentina could beat England, England could beat Argentina, Spain could beat either of them, and either could beat Spain. That is why I never bought the argument after the Argentina defeat that, essentially, “Well, England wouldn’t have had a chance against Spain anyway.”

First of all, that completely misses the point of my criticism of Tuchel against Argentina. But it also sells this England team short, and this match demonstrated exactly why. England gave the world champions problems that they rarely encountered during their World Cup run. They went behind, recovered, took the lead and eventually had a penalty to go 3-1 ahead. Spain ultimately won the match and deserve credit for taking advantage of England’s mistakes, but there was nothing about this encounter that suggested England should regard Spain—or anybody else—as an opponent they simply cannot beat.

As the first half progressed, England increasingly began to impose themselves on the world champions. Jude Bellingham started taking control, and England’s equaliser was an outstanding piece of attacking football. Bellingham combined beautifully with Anthony Gordon, who finished the move superbly to make it 1-1. Gordon continues to emerge as one of the most exciting young faces of this England team, fresh off an exciting campaign with Barcelona. His confidence, directness and willingness to attack defenders give England another dimension, and his performance against Spain was another reminder of how significant a player he can become for this national side.

Then came Harry Kane. Nico O’Reilly delivered the ball into the area and Kane attacked it, with his header taking a fortuitous bounce off Marc Cucurella that froze Unai Simón and found its way into the net. In the space of four minutes, England had completely turned the match around and went into half-time ahead 2-1.

This is where the comparison with Argentina becomes impossible to ignore. My criticism of Thomas Tuchel after the World Cup semi-final was never simply that England lost a football match. Teams lose football matches. Great teams lose football matches. Sometimes the opposition produces something special, sometimes a player makes a mistake and sometimes the ball simply does not bounce your way. My criticism was about how England responded to having the lead.

Against Argentina, England retreated. Tuchel chose preservation over pressure. England increasingly surrendered the initiative, eventually dropping into what amounted to survival football. Had England continued pressing Argentina, continued attacking them and ultimately lost 2-1, there would never have been the same condemnation from me of Tuchel’s tactics or approach.

Against Spain, England did something different. They kept playing, kept attacking and kept trying to impose themselves. Importantly, they did it from the lead. Playing with freedom when you are chasing a game is one thing. Continuing to play with that freedom once you have taken the lead is another, although tactically it really shouldn’t be.

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England continued pressing after half-time and earned a penalty when Rodri was adjudged, following a VAR review, to have fouled Bellingham. Kane stepped forward with the opportunity to make it 3-1, slipped, and crashed the ball against the crossbar. That moment will inevitably become one of the defining images of this match because of what happened afterward.

Spain took full advantage, first equalising through Álex Baena and then producing the sort of beautiful, textbook Spanish combination that has defined so many of their best teams, with Baena releasing Mikel Oyarzabal for the eventual winner. England should have been 3-1 ahead. They weren’t, and Spain punished them. That does not erase what England demonstrated.

Kane has now had a few painful penalty moments in an England shirt. He has also taken quite a large number of penalties throughout his career and converted an enormous number of important ones. One thing I have never liked doing is criticising a player who steps up to take a penalty and strikes the ball honestly and with conviction, which is really all you can ask a player to do. Everyone misses a penalty eventually.

Kane did that here. He stepped up with optimism and conviction, slipped, and hit the crossbar. It is unfortunate, and this certainly joins the list of painful penalty misses he has had for England. Given the eventual scoreline, it will inevitably receive attention, but I certainly see no reason for any great hand-wringing over it. These things happen.

It also brings me back to one of the arguments made by some of Tuchel’s apologists following the Argentina defeat: that England probably would have lost to Spain in the World Cup final anyway. I thought that was an absurd concession then, and this match only reinforces my view. England are capable of beating Spain, they are capable of beating Argentina, and they are capable of beating any international team in the world.

That does not mean they will beat them every time. Of course they won’t. Spain are world champions for a reason. They are an exceptional football team, and when England gave them opportunities, they punished them. But England were not out of place on the same field. In fact, pound for pound, I thought England looked the stronger team for significant stretches of this match.

They went behind, fought back, took the lead and had a penalty to establish a two-goal advantage. They created chances, attacked, pressed and demonstrated that they could hurt Spain. Crucially, when England found themselves ahead, they did not immediately decide that the objective of the match had changed from playing football to surviving it. That is progress.

There are certainly things Tuchel must fix. England’s defensive lapses were far too frequent. Spain created far too many situations in which England defenders were isolated, and against attackers of this quality, that is eventually going to cost you. But those are tactical and technical problems that can be addressed. The mentality England displayed against Spain is something I would much rather build upon.

It is also worth keeping the Nations League itself in perspective. I enjoy the competition. It is certainly more meaningful than a conventional international friendly, but it is not the World Cup or European Championship. In my mind, its significance sits somewhere between an exhibition and a major international tournament. There is certainly a degree to which these matches are both competition and tryout, particularly at the beginning of a new cycle when coaches are evaluating players, combinations and tactical ideas.

This was also only the opening game of the group stage, in a competition where England and Spain will play one another twice. Depending upon how the group develops and how the eventual bracket falls, this result may ultimately have very little effect on England’s tournament. The goal is not to beat Spain in a Nations League group-stage match in September. The goal is to develop a team capable of winning a major international tournament.

That is the prism through which this match should be viewed. If England ultimately win a World Cup or European Championship playing brave, aggressive football, nobody is going to care very much that Spain beat them 3-2 at Wembley in September 2026. What matters is whether England are learning the lessons necessary to win when the match really does decide everything.

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There can even be value in beginning a tournament with a frustrating result like this. Argentina provided perhaps the ultimate example at the 2022 World Cup. They began the tournament with a colossal upset against Saudi Arabia, a result that effectively turned every subsequent match into something approaching a must-win game. They responded to that pressure and ultimately won the World Cup. England are obviously in a very different competition and situation here, but the broader principle remains: an early setback can focus a team, expose weaknesses and provide lessons without ending its ambitions.

That is why, despite the result, I leave this game encouraged. Bellingham continues to emerge as the leader of this England team. Gordon continues to establish himself as a major contributor. Against the reigning world champions, England showed that they can play with anybody, and Spain were certainly fortunate to escape Wembley with the victory.

England should leave feeling that they let one get away. There were defensive mistakes that Tuchel will have plenty of opportunity to examine, and Kane will certainly wish he could have that penalty again. But unlike the Argentina match, I do not leave this one wondering why England stopped trying to win. They continued to attack, continued to press and continued trying to impose themselves. They made mistakes, and an outstanding Spanish team punished those mistakes. On another afternoon, England might very well have come away with the victory.

As I wrote following the World Cup, my criticism was never based simply upon England losing. It was based upon the manner in which they approached the decisive stages of that match against Argentina. There is consistency in being critical of that performance while viewing this one, despite another defeat, much more positively. England played in a manner much closer to how I believe this team must play if it is ultimately going to win a major tournament.

England will get another opportunity against Spain soon enough. The return fixture comes on Sunday, November 15, when England travel to Madrid to face the world champions at the Metropolitano Stadium in the final match of the Nations League group stage. We will have another crack at them there.

In the meantime, there are plenty of positives to build upon. This was an uneven performance, certainly an imperfect one, and ultimately an unfortunate defeat. But evaluated in terms of where England need to go rather than simply what appeared on the scoreboard this afternoon, I view it as a largely positive step toward that goal.

On paper, there is a structure. Once the ball begins to move, however, positions become far less important. Midfielders drop towards the centre-backs, attackers drift away from traditional zones and several players can suddenly appear on the same side of the pitch.

At first glance, it can look chaotic. But that apparent chaos may be one of Middlesbrough’s greatest strengths. Hellberg has built a side around movement, numerical superiority and aggressive pressing rather than fixed positions. The result is a team capable of asking Championship opponents questions they are not always accustomed to answering. If Middlesbrough are to return to the Premier League, that tactical identity could be what separates them from the rest.

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Middlesbrough create space by giving it up

One of the most interesting features of Hellberg’s football is the way Middlesbrough manipulate space. Many teams try to stretch the pitch when they have possession. Middlesbrough are often willing to do the opposite. Several players move towards the ball, sometimes leaving large areas of the pitch apparently unoccupied. That may seem counterproductive, but it serves a clear purpose.

By concentrating players in one area, Middlesbrough give the ball carrier several short passing options while forcing defenders to make decisions. Follow those movements and space opens elsewhere. Refuse to follow them and Middlesbrough can create a numerical advantage around the ball. That dilemma is what makes the system difficult to defend.

A winger does not always have to remain wide. A striker does not have to permanently occupy the centre-backs. A midfielder can drop into the defensive line in one phase before appearing much further forward in the next. Instead of attacking the same spaces with the same players, Middlesbrough continually change the opposition’s reference points. That uncertainty is important in the Championship, where matches are often shaped by duels, second balls and transitions. Hellberg is trying to create an advantage before those individual battles even begin.

Possession with a purpose

Middlesbrough’s willingness to play short from deep should not be mistaken for possession for possession’s sake. The objective is progression.

When opponents press high, Middlesbrough can drop midfielders deeper to create additional passing options around the first line of pressure. That immediately creates a problem for the opposition. Stay compact and Middlesbrough have players available to progress the ball. Push another player forward and space begins to appear behind the press. The most dangerous moment can therefore arrive when Middlesbrough appear to be playing at their slowest. They circulate the ball, invite pressure and wait. Then the tempo changes. One pass breaks a line.

A midfielder carries the ball forward. An attacker receives between midfield and defence. A seemingly harmless spell of possession suddenly becomes an attack. That change of speed is central to Hellberg’s approach. Possession is not the destination. It is a way of manipulating the opposition.

Freedom does not mean disorder

Perhaps the most fascinating element of Hellberg’s system is the freedom given to his players. Traditional positional descriptions quickly become inadequate when Middlesbrough have the ball. An attacker can move wide to drag a defender away from the centre. Another player can attack the space that movement creates. On the opposite side, a full-back may suddenly have room to advance because the opposition has been attracted towards the ball.

Those rotations make Middlesbrough unpredictable. But unpredictability only works when players understand one another. That may be one of Hellberg’s biggest achievements. His football requires players to recognise space rather than simply memorise where they are supposed to stand. One movement has to trigger another. When it works, Middlesbrough can overload one area before attacking another. It is freedom, but not improvisation without structure. It is organised freedom.

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The other side of Hellberg’s philosophy

For all the attention given to Middlesbrough’s football in possession, their work without the ball may prove just as important. Hellberg wants his team close together when attacking, and that naturally creates another advantage. When Middlesbrough lose possession, several players are already close enough to react immediately. Rather than retreating, they can counter-press. That aggression is also visible higher up the pitch. Middlesbrough are willing to commit players forward to disrupt an opponent’s build-up and force decisions under pressure.

The aim is not simply to win the ball back eventually. It is to recover possession in areas from which Middlesbrough can attack immediately. That connection between their attacking and defensive ideas matters. The same compactness that creates combinations in possession also allows them to swarm around the ball when it is lost. Hellberg’s attacking football and pressing are not two separate systems. They depend on each other.

The risk could define their season

There is, however, an obvious danger. Committing players towards the ball and allowing significant positional freedom inevitably leaves space elsewhere. If an opponent escapes Middlesbrough’s pressure, the same compactness that creates attacking overloads can quickly become a vulnerability. That is the trade-off Hellberg has to manage.

Over a 46-game Championship season, Middlesbrough will face opponents who are happy to bypass the press, attack quickly and exploit the spaces left behind. The answer is not to remove the freedom that makes the team dangerous. Doing so would strip away much of what makes Hellberg’s football distinctive.

Instead, Middlesbrough’s promotion prospects may depend on how well they control the moments when the first press fails. That is what makes this side so intriguing. Hellberg is not simply trying to make Middlesbrough more dominant in possession. He is building a team in which movement creates space, possession attracts pressure and aggression after turnovers creates opportunities to attack again.

It will not always look conventional. It may not always look controlled. But underneath the apparent chaos is a clear idea. And if Middlesbrough can preserve that identity while managing the risks that come with it, Hellberg’s approach may give them something every promotion contender needs: a way of making opponents uncomfortable.

I gave Tuchel considerable deference over several controversial selection decisions because there appeared to be a deliberate tactical plan behind them. Given how the tournament ended, and especially what happened when England led Argentina with a place in the final within reach, that deference can no longer prevent a proper examination of those choices.

Once that conclusion is reached, several decisions for which I had previously extended Tuchel the benefit of the doubt have to be reconsidered, starting with the construction of the squad. If England had intentionally sacrificed some of its most gifted footballers in order to create a tactically precise tournament team, what exactly had that team been engineered to do? If the answer in the defining moment was to put six defenders on the pitch and surrender the initiative, the original logic becomes considerably harder to defend.

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That question leads inevitably to Cole Palmer and Phil Foden, two of the most technically gifted attacking players available to England. Form matters, and neither had enjoyed an ideal club season. I understand why a national-team manager might weigh current form differently from accumulated reputation, and I do not know everything that went into Tuchel’s thinking. Personality, tactical fit, training, chemistry and psychology all matter at tournament level.

Still, Palmer in particular is the sort of footballer I believe England should be building around. He can alter the geometry of a match. He can receive the ball in an area that appears harmless and make a defender move somewhere he does not want to go. Those qualities become more valuable, not less, when knockout matches tighten and conventional attacking patterns stop working.

Palmer had already shown that capacity for England. He came off the bench repeatedly at Euro 2024 and scored the equaliser in the final against Spain. Then, at the 2025 Club World Cup final in the United States, with Chelsea facing Paris Saint-Germain, Palmer scored twice and created another goal. I remember watching it and thinking that this was a player I expected to be there for England at the World Cup: young, fearless, technically exceptional and seemingly energised rather than diminished by a major occasion.

Maybe his omission really was entirely footballing. I don’t know, and I have no interest in inventing a personal conflict for which I have no evidence. But after watching England against Argentina, it is impossible for me not to revisit the decision. When England desperately needed someone capable of keeping the ball, beating a man, creating an outlet and forcing Argentina to think about something other than attacking, one of the most obvious candidates in the entire English talent pool was watching from somewhere else.

The same broad argument applies to Foden. This does not mean a manager must select every famous player or somehow fit every creative midfielder into the same starting eleven. It means tournament squads need alternatives, especially alternatives capable of changing the character of a match.

Harry Kane is an important part of this discussion. A core element of Tuchel’s conception of England was understandably built around perhaps the most prolific number nine the country has produced in generations. Kane remains an extraordinary goalscorer and an unusually gifted passer for his position, and that approach delivered to a degree during this World Cup. I hope he remains prolific for years to come.
But age inevitably becomes part of the calculation. England cannot construct its future simply by assuming that the same architecture will remain intact indefinitely. A centre-forward, even one as accomplished as Kane, is also naturally limited in how much he can alter the entire geometry of a match when his team can no longer progress the ball toward him. Creative players can change that geometry. Palmer can. Foden can. Bellingham can. England left two of them at home.

Some reimagining of the project is therefore both necessary and appropriate. It does not require discarding Kane or everything Tuchel has attempted to build. It means recognising the extraordinary young talent around him and beginning to establish the next England team around players who can define its identity for years to come. Jude Bellingham should be one of those foundations. Anthony Gordon emerged from this World Cup as another. Cole Palmer should be central to the conversation despite his omission from this squad. There are others, of course, and more will emerge before 2030, but England already possesses the beginnings of a young core capable of playing brave, technically ambitious football.

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England’s 6–4 victory over France in the third-place match does not retroactively sanitise Argentina. Third-place matches are strange events, and both teams entered that one carrying the physical and emotional exhaustion of missing the final. But there were encouraging things in England’s performance, including the willingness to continue attacking when the match became chaotic. Bukayo Saka scored a hat-trick, and Bellingham capped an extraordinary individual tournament with another late goal. If there are pieces of England’s future contained in that performance, they should be embraced.

There is also a cultural question around Tuchel’s England, although I regard it as supporting evidence rather than the central case. The public episode involving Bellingham after the Norway match bothered me from several directions. Gabriel Clarke’s handling of the interview, taking Tuchel’s criticism and putting it to Bellingham in a way that stripped away much of the surrounding context, was irresponsible in my view.

That does not excuse Bellingham’s reaction. However brilliant or influential a footballer is, publicly dismissing his manager’s criticism creates what I would call a cultural ultimatum. A healthy sporting organisation cannot simply allow a moment like that to disappear. There has to be some reaffirmation of the hierarchy, whether through an apology, a private reckoning, discipline or an unmistakable restoration of mutual respect. Otherwise the rest of the team learns that managerial authority is conditional on whether its most important players feel like accepting it.

This is where my experience watching Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots inevitably informs my thinking. Great sporting cultures do not happen accidentally. Leadership has to establish the standard, but the organization above the coach also has to support legitimate authority rather than quietly erode it. My belief that Robert Kraft ultimately undermined Belichick and helped destroy the very culture that had produced the Patriots dynasty is an argument for another day, but the underlying lesson applies far beyond American football.

None of this makes the England question Tuchel versus Bellingham. It is not. Bellingham stays. He had an extraordinary World Cup, repeatedly producing decisive moments and ultimately adding another spectacular goal against France despite not starting the third-place match. His greatness belongs to him, and I have no interest in constructing some convenient psychological story in which tension with Tuchel somehow deserves credit for how brilliantly he played.

Bellingham is a player England should build around, just as Gordon and Palmer should be major parts of the future. But great players can be empowered while also being expected to operate within clear cultural boundaries. Those ideas are not contradictory. If the FA is moving forward with Tuchel, it now has a particular responsibility to reinforce the integrity of his dressing room. Players, however important, cannot be permitted to believe that openly challenging the manager in a fundamentally disruptive manner carries no consequence.

That responsibility belongs to Tuchel as well. Retaining a manager does not mean pretending his mistakes did not happen. The errors against Argentina should be identified clearly and learned from. Managerial accountability cannot become managerial impotence, however. If the FA has decided that Tuchel remains the man, then it should demand that he learn from his mistakes while simultaneously giving him the institutional authority necessary to lead.

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The Bellingham episode tells us something about the culture. Palmer’s absence tells us something about the footballing vision. Neither is the central reason I believe England should have dismissed Thomas Tuchel. Argentina is. Strip away everything else and look at the arc of Tuchel’s tournament. England played down to several lesser opponents and survived a series of tight matches. It produced one particularly stirring backs-to-the-wall victory over Mexico in circumstances that genuinely required that mentality. It reached a World Cup semifinal, took the lead against one of the great football nations and then retreated into precisely the kind of football Tuchel had been hired to replace.

That is what makes the defeat so damning. Thomas Tuchel was supposed to be the reaction to Gareth Southgate’s England. Instead, at the defining moment, his England became almost a caricature of the criticism aimed at Southgate: score first, become frightened of losing what you have, surrender the initiative and hope the clock rescues you.

England should have sacked Tuchel because of what that moment revealed, not because replacing him would have guaranteed a trophy. There are no guarantees in tournament football. England’s talent pool is good enough to compete with every major footballing nation, which also means that the decisive matches will often be against teams good enough to beat England. Chance will always be involved.

The FA’s responsibility was not to predict the future with certainty. It was to evaluate the evidence it had and determine whether the project deserved to continue. I believe Argentina provided enough evidence to make a change. My own preference would have been to simplify the idea of what England was trying to achieve. I would have looked for a British manager with the tactical ability required at this level but also a deep understanding of what representing the country means, someone with genuine patriotic pride and a fire in the belly to project that confidence through the team.

By national identity, I do not mean nostalgia or a rejection of tactical sophistication. England should learn from the best ideas in world football. But an England team should also look recognizably like England: brave, disciplined, physically and mentally resilient, confident in its ability to compete with anyone and willing to attack rather than shrink when the stakes become greatest. The extraordinary performance with ten men at the Azteca showed one version of that identity. The retreat against Argentina showed its opposite.

The Red Sox fired Grady Little after 2003. The following October, they found themselves facing the Yankees again in the American League Championship Series, this time falling behind three games to none. No Major League Baseball team had ever overcome a 3–0 postseason deficit. Boston won four straight, completed the first such comeback in baseball postseason history, then swept the St. Louis Cardinals to win the franchise’s first World Series in 86 years.

That history does not prove that England would have won anything by dismissing Thomas Tuchel. To claim that it does would contradict everything I have argued about the unpredictability of knockout sport. The lesson is narrower and more useful: sometimes an organization has to recognize that getting further than it has in years is not, by itself, sufficient reason to retain the person who got it there. Sometimes the defining moment reveals more than the final placement does.

Grady Little got Boston to within one victory of the World Series. In an iconic match, against an iconic opponent, in an iconic moment, he made the decision that told the organization it had seen enough. Thomas Tuchel got England to within one victory of the World Cup final. Then, against Argentina of all teams, with England ahead and history within reach, he bottled it. I believe England should have decided that it had seen enough too.

It did not, and that changes the purpose of this argument. For all intents and purposes, England and the FA are moving forward with Thomas Tuchel. That is a different decision from the one I would have made, but the conversation now has to become constructive. Like Southgate before him, I have never doubted that Tuchel meant well. I liked him when he took the job, I wanted him to succeed, and if he is leading England at the European Championship, I will be rooting for England and rooting for him to succeed as well. The purpose of identifying what went wrong should not be to spend the next two years waiting to say, “I told you so.” It should be to make sure the same mistakes are not repeated.

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Constructive support, however, cannot require pretending that what happened against Argentina did not happen. In fact, the opposite is true. Moving forward successfully has to begin with a sober appraisal of what we just witnessed: an epic managerial blunder. That means reimagining parts of the project as Kane gets older and England’s next generation takes greater responsibility. It means building around talents such as Bellingham, Gordon and Palmer. It means developing a national footballing identity that does not disappear when England takes a lead against an elite opponent. And it means establishing a strong dressing-room culture in which England’s great players are empowered without ever becoming bigger than the authority necessary to manage the team.

There is every reason for optimism. Nothing that happened against Argentina changes my belief in the quality of English football. England can enter the next European Championship with as legitimate a chance of winning it as almost anyone. France and Spain may begin slightly ahead in my estimation, but England belongs immediately in the conversation beneath them. There is equally no reason this generation cannot develop toward another serious challenge for the World Cup in 2030.

That is ultimately the spirit in which I offer these thoughts. I believe Thomas Tuchel bottled the biggest match of his England tenure. I believe his management of the semifinal against Argentina, with a place in the World Cup final within reach, should have cost him his job. The FA disagreed, and its decision has been made. Acknowledging the magnitude of that failure is not rooting against Tuchel. It is the necessary starting point for making sure England does not repeat it.

So learn from it. Reimagine the project where it needs reimagining. Build around the extraordinary talent England already possesses. Reinforce the integrity of the dressing room. Establish an identity that survives the pressure of the biggest occasions. And if England finds itself thirty-five minutes from a major final again, make certain its first instinct is not to become frightened of losing it.

I wanted England to make a different decision about Thomas Tuchel. They didn’t. I liked him when he arrived, I believe he genuinely wants to bring England success, and now that he remains the manager, I hope he does exactly that. Everyone who cares about English football should be able to debate these questions openly and constructively, because there is too much talent in this generation, and too much opportunity ahead of it, for the lessons of Argentina to be wasted.

England cannot change what happened in the semifinal. It can make sure it learns from it.