Over the past week I have used this platform to crown France as unbeatable and then to explain, in some detail, how Spain would beat them. My credibility, such as it was, lies in pieces. So I might as well say the thing I’ve been suppressing since the group stage, the thing every Englishman says only in a whisper until they’ve had a few pints. Football could actually come ‘home’. And this time I’m not working off number of plastic flags per capita or feelings. The data is on our side.
England Can Win Ugly
Look at the knockout run. A goal down to a vibrant DR Congo inside seven minutes. No panic, a second half Kane brace and the Three Lions advance. Two-nil up at a feverish Azteca, pegged back, reduced to ten men on 54 minutes. Won 3-2. A goal down to Norway in a quarter-final, playing poorly and on the ropes. Won 2-1 in extra time.
In every knockout game of this World Cup, England have either trailed or been a man down, and they have won every single one. For thirty years the data on England was brutally consistent: hit adversity in a knockout game, go home. This team has flipped that record in the space of eleven days. Whatever you call that quality, if it’s resilience, streetwiseness or sheer bloody-mindedness, England historically had none of it, and now they have it in spades.
Round of 32 · Atlanta
Behind after 7 minutes. Kane’s second-half double turns it around.
Round of 16 · Estadio Azteca
Bellingham brace, then 40 minutes with ten men after Quansah’s red. Held out.
Quarter-final · after extra time
Behind again. Bellingham equalises before half-time, wins it in extra time.
Knockout games trailed in
3 of 3
Knockout games won
3 of 3
Tournament record
W5 D1 L0
Goals for / against
13 / 6
Bellingham Is Clutch
Four knockout goals, and not a single one of them decorative. Two in two minutes to seize the Azteca by the throat. An equaliser on the stroke of half-time against Norway when the game was drifting towards disaster, then the extra-time winner. Jude Bellingham’s goals at this World Cup haven’t padded scorelines; they have bent matches seemingly heading out of their grasp to the Three Lions’ will.
Argentina have Messi producing moments, and this is a danger England must somehow contain on Wednesday. But England have a 23-year-old producing them at the precise minute they’re needed, in the hardest games, over and over. In tournament football there is no statistic more valuable than that.
Kane Is the Ultimate Poacher
Harry Kane is now England’s record World Cup goalscorer, with 6 at this tournament alone. He registered a brace to sink Croatia, the two second-half goals that turned the DR Congo scare around, and the nerveless penalty in Mexico City with the whole stadium howling at him. Records are lovely, but Kane knows better than anyone that they end up as pub-quiz trivia unless there’s a trophy attached.
He has spent an entire career collecting golden boots in empty-handed seasons. A great striker with a point to prove is dangerous. A great striker with a legacy to complete, two games from immortality, is something else entirely.
Kane, WC 2026 goals
6
England’s all-time WC scorer
Kane
Bellingham knockout goals
4
…scored while level or behind
3 of 4
England’s match-winners by round
4) Set Pieces Decide World Cups, and England Are Built for Them
Here is the least glamorous, most reliable statistic in tournament football: as matches get tighter, set pieces become a bigger edge. Knockout games between elite sides produce few clear chances from open play, which is why roughly a third of goals at this World Cup have come from dead-ball situations, a share that has been climbing tournament on tournament as the Premier League’s set-piece obsession goes global.
Nobody is better equipped for that world than England. Three of their goals at this tournament have already come from the pinpoint deliveries of Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka, with Kane and Bellingham attacking the ball in the box, and this is a squad packed with players from the most set-piece-literate league on earth.
This is the same national side that famously scored nine of its twelve goals from dead balls on the run to the 2018 semi-final. Argentina, France and Spain will rightly fear England in open play. But semi-finals are settled in the six-yard box at 1-1 with twelve minutes left, from a corner won off a tired full-back. That is not romance; that is where the fine margins are found at the business end of major tournaments. And it is precisely the scenario England have spent four years engineering.
England set-piece goals, WC 2026
2
Delivery from
Rice & Saka
England 2018: goals from set pieces
9 of 12
Set-piece share of World Cup goals, by tournament
Set-piece share includes penalties, free kicks, corners and throw-in routines. 2026 figure covers the tournament through the quarter-finals; historical shares are approximate, compiled from tournament technical reports.
Tuchel Was Hired for Exactly This
Gareth Southgate took England to two finals and couldn’t land the final punch. The FA’s response was ruthless: hire a man whose entire reputation is built on the knockout punch.
Thomas Tuchel won a Champions League with a Chelsea side nobody fancied by out-thinking Pep Guardiola in a final; he is a serial winner of knockout ties. And it shows in the way this England close games out — ten men for 40 minutes in the Azteca and barely a chance conceded; extra time against Norway managed like a training exercise. The old England were a decent side hoping; this England are a coached side executing. Argentina and Messi await, and then the winner of France and Spain. No easy route — but as the numbers above attest, this England are at their best precisely when it’s hardest.
Closing
So here I am, back where every Englishman starts and ends: flag in hand, heart on sleeve, lessons resolutely unlearned. I gave France the trophy after they coasted past Morocco and handed it to Spain when preparing my preview of that semifinal. Now, with the zeal of a man who was never really a doubter, (honest), I’m telling you what Gus said all along. That it’s coming home.
Perhaps this is what sixty years of hurt does: it teaches you to disguise hope as analysis. But look at the comebacks, look at Bellingham, look at the set piece prowess of these Premier League stars, and tell me it isn’t different this time.
Wednesday night, Atlanta. Messi in the way, then the winner of what is, on paper at least, the greatest semi-final of the modern era. It may seem illogical to still believe in the Three Lions, but I’m telling you now, this time it really could be coming home.
More Soccer Betting Picks
