{"id":3901,"date":"2026-06-18T10:10:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T10:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=3901"},"modified":"2026-06-18T10:10:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T10:10:21","slug":"world-cup-2026-england-4-2-croatia-if-we-lose-we-lose-in-our-way-what-tuchel-said-at-half-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=3901","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: England 4-2 Croatia &#8211; &#8216;If we lose, we lose in our way&#8217; &#8211; what Tuchel said at half-time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a separate interview with BBC Sport, the Bayern Munich striker added: &#8220;The boss said at half-time to up the tempo, go man for man and completely take the game to them, and that is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You saw us at our best level, both with and without the ball and we could have scored three or four goals in that 20-minute spell in the second half.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to ITV at half-time, Tuchel&#8217;s assistant Anthony Barry described the first half display as &#8220;fearful&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Overall, a complicated and confusing first half from us, really,&#8221; said Barry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;A lot of nervous energy early on. I think that&#8217;s accepted and maybe expected in the opening game of a World Cup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;From there, then we made some decisions where the energy was not free in our minds. Playing long when we should play short, playing short when we should play long really, not playing through the gaps, not allowing us to accelerate our game the way we wanted to.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You&#8217;d think the penalty would free us up, allow us to play more like us, to be ourselves, but again we fell back into some fearful patterns.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Asked what he said to his team at half-time, Tuchel told ITV: &#8220;Even if we lose, it will not change my perception of the last 17 days, but let&#8217;s do it our way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We were too focused on protecting the result. We were a back seven and we didn&#8217;t defend. If the result doesn&#8217;t go our way, we want to play our way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I tried to encourage them to go for it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The half-time team talk seemed to have an almost immediate impact as Bellingham scored within two minutes of the restart to put England 3-2 ahead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Real Madrid midfielder told ITV: &#8220;It wasn&#8217;t one of those where it was a big drama or standing up and shouting; it was what the team needed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We have a mature group with great leaders in there. Everyone knew the level we had to get to. The start of the second half gave us a great platform.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a separate interview with BBC Sport, the Bayern Munich striker added: &#8220;The boss said at half-time to up the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}