World Cup Insights: England, Messi, and the Semi-Final Anticipation
Sixty-three hours without a ball being kicked. At the sharp end of a World Cup, that feels like an off-season. The stadium lights are off, but the sport never really shuts down. It just moves – into inboxes, into pubs, into half-formed arguments about tactics, tournaments and who might just stop France.
This is the final week. The air is thick with what-ifs.
England, Argentina and the weight of a semi-final
Some supporters plan for these weeks with military precision. Others gamble. One England fan, Al Daw, did both.
He took his mother to see England against Panama in New Jersey for her 70th birthday. It poured down, MetLife Stadium felt like a concrete cell, but the itch to come back never left. So, on Thursday, before the semi-final line-up was even confirmed, he cracked.
Tickets booked for the semi-final. Flights from Manchester to Atlanta via Paris. Hotel by the ground. All for him and his eight-year-old son. Five kids at home, a sixth due in late July, and a bank balance wincing at “crackers” prices. He watched England’s quarter-final “through his fingers”, voice shredded by the end, but the bet paid off. His boy Digby is now heading to watch England – and, perhaps, Lionel Messi’s last match for his country.
That is what these weeks do. They make rational adults roll the dice on lifetime memories.
On the pitch, the questions are colder. Who starts? Who can live with Argentina’s movement and Messi’s orbit?
On the right flank, Djed Spence brings a different kind of threat, a runner who wants to dart in behind and stretch tired legs. Against Argentina, the expectation is that Reece James will get the nod at right-back, with Nico O’Reilly on the left. The debate runs deeper than that, though. Some would have Lewis Hall or Luke Shaw ahead of O’Reilly if they were fit and available. They aren’t. Those are the compromises of tournament football.
At centre-back, John Stones divides opinion. As a footballer, his quality on the ball is obvious. As a defender, doubts remain. His lack of pace against Julián Álvarez and Lautaro Martínez could be a problem, and tracking Messi between the lines demands a level of defensive cunning that very few possess. The semi-final will expose strengths and weaknesses with brutal clarity.
France, Spain, England, Argentina: who can crack the champions?
The question hangs over this entire week: who, if anyone, can stop France?
Spain look best placed. Rodri is edging back towards his pre-injury authority, knitting everything together from deep. They still need more from Lamine Yamal, who doesn’t yet look fully right physically, but their control of midfield gives them a genuine shot.
England? They can outrun France in the middle of the pitch. They have legs, energy, and players who can press. The concern sits behind them. Over 90 minutes, can this defence survive the sustained pressure of a side that punishes every lapse?
Argentina’s problem is the opposite. Messi remains the genius, Álvarez and Lautaro bring menace, but in midfield they lack the depth and variety of France or Spain. Against an elite engine room, that gap yawns wider with every passing minute.
Bruno, Bernardo and a Portugal puzzle
Whatever your gripe with your team, the solution is almost never: leave out Bernardo Silva and haul off Bruno Fernandes early.
Bruno, especially, is a player who needs time. He keeps trying things, keeps forcing passes and shots that others shy away from. Trim 20 minutes off his game and you cut down the chances of him producing the one moment that matters. If you also ask him to collect the ball off the back four, you blunt him twice – he’s further from goal and further from doing the damage he’s in the team to do.
Which makes Roberto Martínez’s Portugal all the more baffling. This is a side that can field a double Champions League-winning midfield with Bruno ahead of them, yet they look dour, predictable and, at times, flat-out bad. With that talent, to be this underwhelming is remarkable in all the wrong ways.
José Mourinho always felt like the natural fit for this generation of Portuguese players. He has not gone that way – Real Madrid have rolled the dice again, hoping they can coax the old magic from him – but you can’t help wondering what he might have done with this squad. It is hard to imagine he would have done worse.
Bellingham, Tuchel and a flash of heat
Jude Bellingham and Thomas Tuchel shared sharp words in the glare of the moment. It happens. Both are serious professionals, both are obsessed with winning. Both also know they need each other.
The exchange came in a surge of emotion and relief. Those things burn hot and fast. By the time the analysis shows roll their clips and the think pieces land, the protagonists have usually moved on. This one feels like it will blow over quickly, if it hasn’t already.
Messi, Maradona and the distortion of genius
The shadow hanging over this week is not just France, not just England’s nerves, not just the logistics of 64 teams. It is Messi. It is legacy.
For some, Lionel Messi is the greatest of all time, and the case is compelling. His consistency, his longevity, his ability to carry teams year after year is unmatched. Yet the bar he had to clear was set by Diego Maradona in a single, outrageous stretch of time.
Mexico 86 did strange things to those who watched it young. One writer remembers it as his first World Cup, a tournament that rewired his sense of what was possible. When Maradona scored that second goal against England, commentator Barry Davies exclaimed, “And you’ve got to say that’s magnificent.” A seven-year-old in front of the television piped up: “That’s better than magnificent.”
He thought that was football. One man weaving past everyone between him and the goal, as if the sport were a solo pursuit. It turned out it was not football. It was Diego. No one has done more to challenge the idea that this is, fundamentally, a team game.
Messi’s greatness is built on repetition and relentlessness. Maradona’s peak was a supernova. Choose your flavour of genius; the sport is richer for having both.
Pubs, empty seats and a changing matchday
Not everyone is riding the World Cup wave. The Shovel Inn in Stourbridge, where Bellingham was born, tells a different story.
Owner Steve Hopkins has worked in pubs across six World Cups. Most of them, he says, were “fantastic for trade”. This one? Not so much. People are staying away or drifting in late. Where once the bar would be full by 3pm or 4pm for an 8pm kick-off, now the rush comes closer to the whistle – if it comes at all.
Before, a World Cup meant doubling your takings. Now, Hopkins is contemplating his exit. He has run pubs since he was 18. He is 64 and ready to walk away after the tournament. Covid changed habits, he says. People stay home. They stream, they scroll, they watch on their own sofas.
For the Shovel Inn, a good night is about £3,000. On Wednesday, for a semi-final at a prime evening slot, Hopkins says that if he makes £1,000 he will be doing well. If the crowd doesn’t come, that will “just sum it up”.
The game still unites, but the way people gather around it is shifting.
The World Cup’s next stretch: 64 teams and a bigger stage
Gianni Infantino wants more. Of course he does. Fifa’s push to expand the World Cup to 64 teams is, transparently, about money, but the football argument is more nuanced.
On paper, the gap between the 48th and 64th best teams in the world is not huge. Bringing more nations in does not automatically dilute the tournament. It might even sharpen it.
One clear advantage: a clean group stage. With 64 teams, you can return to groups where only the top two go through. No third-place lifelines. No sides sneaking into the knockouts having only beaten the weakest team in the group. No 72 games just to eliminate 16 nations. The jeopardy returns.
Expanded fields at the Euros have already shown one upside: new voices, new flags, new stories. Countries that would otherwise be shut out have lit up tournaments. That matters.
The doubts sit elsewhere. Logistics. Infrastructure. Can more than a handful of nations realistically host 64-team tournaments, with enough stadiums, hotels, training bases, media facilities? Will qualification – already a slog – become even more tedious?
Instinct says resist. The gut rebels against anything Infantino sells as “growth”. But the practical case is not so easily dismissed. A bigger World Cup might, ironically, produce a purer competition format.
Between matches, the game keeps talking
This is what a World Cup lull looks like. Arguments about Stones’ pace and Bruno’s minutes. Emails about 64-team formats. Stories of fans flying halfway around the world on a hunch. Pub landlords counting the cost of a quieter generation of supporters. Old debates about Messi and Maradona dragged out again because, for a few hours, there is no new miracle to watch.
The pitches will light up again soon enough. France will be hunted. England will be tested. Messi will walk out, maybe for the last time on this stage, and a boy called Digby will sit in the stands, trying to make sense of it all.
What will this final week leave behind: a coronation, a shock, or a reminder that football is still capable of stretching beyond what we think it can be?
