Thomas Tuchel defends second half substitutions after Wayne Rooney claims Three Lions boss 'asked for trouble'
England made a number of defensive changes to the team as the game wore on and the team sat deeper
England boss Thomas Tuchel has defended the second half substitutions he made with England 1-0 up, moments before Argentina turned the semi-final on its head.
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The manager called on defensive reinforcements in the second half, leaving his side with an uphill task once Argentina levelled and shortly after made it 2-1.
Tension turned to heartbreak when Lautaro Martinez headed home the winner with minutes left on the clock.
The decisions were questioned by former England striker Wayne Rooney who said: "If you’re an attacking player on that pitch and you go 1-0 up and you see the changes which the manager’s making, you’re losing belief, there’s only so many times you can get away with it.
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"Then you start thinking, oh no we’re going to sit back for this long, how are we going to get through this?"
But asked about the subs afterwards, Tuchel said: "Of course we wanted to go for the second goal but I did not have the feeling that offensive substitutions would help.
"We stayed in our 4-4-2 but we became passive, more and more passive.
"We couldn’t win any balls, we couldn’t keep the ball, so I think it was not a structural problem, we changed nothing. But the match changed completely.
"I can understand these discussions are out there and there are millions of coaches after the game who know it better."
But even as criticism quickly followed from pundits and fans, Tuchel insisted he had no regrets.
"The team gave everything,” he said.
"We were very, very close. I think we deserved to be 1-0 up. We played one of our better matches, maybe the best match in the circumstances."
He added: "We’re disappointed but we got too passive after we scored and conceded a lot of chances and could not turn the ball possession around.
"We just conceded so many crosses and chances and shots. We were close but we couldn’t keep the level up after we scored.
"It was tough. We couldn’t bring it over the line. No regrets."