Gordon: England must embrace identity, not copy Spain's style

Anthony Gordon sat down at St George's Park with a conviction born from recent failure and current immersion in Spanish football. England's winger, now playing for Barcelona after a £69.3 million summer move from Newcastle, had something to say about the direction his country's team should take. The message was simple but pointed: stop trying to play like Spain.

The wound was still fresh. Just weeks earlier, England had lost to Argentina 2-1 in the World Cup semi-final, a defeat that stung partly because of how it happened. Thomas Tuchel had substituted Gordon seventeen minutes after he scored to put England ahead, shifting to a back five in a more defensive posture. The tactical adjustment invited pressure. Enzo Fernandez equalized, and Lautaro Martinez scored in stoppage time. England did recover to beat France 6-4 in the bronze medal match, securing their best World Cup finish since 1966, but the manner of the Argentina loss left its mark. Gordon said he had never felt worse after a match. Yet he believed that scar could become instructive rather than merely painful—if the team learned the right lesson.

That lesson, in Gordon's view, was about accepting what England actually was rather than chasing what Spain had become. Playing in La Liga had given him an education he could not have gained from watching. Spanish football operated on a different frequency. The intricate possession game, the way players read space and made decisions with the ball—these were not skills that could simply be taught to English players, Gordon argued. Spain's players were built differently. They had qualities England lacked, yes, but England had qualities Spain lacked. So why, he asked, were English coaches trying to make English players into Spanish players? "We can't keep looking at other countries and trying to be like them, because we're not them—we're English and we have our own strengths which they don't have," Gordon said. "Maybe we start playing the way we're good at."

The timing of this argument was pointed. England faced Spain at Wembley on Saturday in their first match since the World Cup, a direct test of whether the team would continue down the path of imitation or chart a different course. Spain had won the World Cup by beating Argentina, dominating with 65 percent possession in the final and restricting Lionel Messi's team to just two shots in 120 minutes, neither on target. That kind of control was the gold standard many believed England needed to master. But Gordon was unconvinced it was even possible for English players, let alone desirable. "It's not in the English DNA," he said. The way Spanish players kept the ball, the decisions they made on it—Gordon found himself watching and thinking he could not have seen the game the same way. It was not something that could be named or taught. It was foundational.

Gordon's own tournament had been impressive. He started five of England's matches and provided four assists alongside his crucial goal against Argentina. In that moment, after scoring on that stage, he felt untouchable. Then he came off. He said he was surprised by the substitution, though he acknowledged that wingers are regularly substituted and he expected it as part of the role. What made this different was the context—the moment, the stakes, the shift in shape that followed. He defended Tuchel's decision, though, arguing that the manager should not bear sole responsibility. England had the best team and the best players on the pitch that day. In the final twenty minutes, they simply did not play their best football. That was not something a manager could control from the sideline. The players could have taken more initiative, could have controlled the game themselves. If they had, Gordon suggested, the tactical adjustment might never have been necessary.

He also pointed to the Mexico match, a last-sixteen victory at the Azteca Stadium where England played with ten men for over thirty-five minutes after Jarell Quansah's red card. That kind of resilience, that ability to compete and win under pressure with numerical disadvantage—that was English. The gap between what the team produced in training and what appeared in matches was another factor. If the players had matched their training performances, Gordon believed, they would have dominated everyone. The path forward, then, was not to become Spain. It was to become more fully themselves, to trust the qualities that made them dangerous, and to stop apologizing for not being something they were not. England had lost two consecutive European Championship finals and been beaten by France and Argentina in the past two World Cups. Those defeats had prompted endless questions about possession and control. But perhaps the question itself was wrong.