Should Argentina winner against England have been disallowed? And other copium

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16 July 2026

It’s not coming home. The years of hurt will tick over to, at least, 62.

England are out of the

World Cup

There is, though, near unanimous agreement on the scapegoat and some unsubtle digs at some of those pesky Argentinians.

And also The Sun shaking their heads in disbelief at the idea anyone might drum up a bit of nationalistic, jingoistic fervour around an international football match.

So that’s good.

Very rare

after an England tournament exit

, we think, for absolutely everyone from the keen racist to the mug punter to the astute armchair fan to the tabloid hack to the beard-stroking broadsheet thinker to all land furiously but correctly

on the exact same reaction and the exact same scapegoat

Not sure there has ever been a clearer consensus across media both traditional and social: that German fool f*cked it.

But the problem with that for your newspaper websites then becomes clear: how to stand out when everyone is largely saying the same thing?

One answer from

The Sun

is to just find something else some dafties are saying on the internet that they have now and pretend it’s a big deal.

WHAT A MESS: England fans convinced Argentina winner should have been DISALLOWED after ‘VAR ignored Messi stomp’

You know this is going to be guff because they’re not even willing to put their own support behind it, are they? By having it as

England

fans saying it they can give themselves a bit of cake-and-eat-it distance from the cryarsing involved in pretending to yourself that Lionel Messi stamped – or stomped – on freshly-minted national treasure St Djedward of Spence in the build-up to the winning goal via the deployment of a couple of misleading stills and very blurry slow-motion videos.

All while the actual footage awkwardly shows he didn’t in fact stamp (or stomp) on him and Spence’s discomfort from the incident appeared to affect his other leg altogether, presumably from twisting or impact on the ground.

So please, can we really just not? There weren’t many positives to take from the manner of England’s exit, but at least it being widely agreed to be infuriatingly self-inflicted meant we all seemed to be collectively avoiding seeking out the familiar but useless comfort of pretending it was all down to those dastardly officials having it in for us.

Not everything has to be a conspiracy, guys. Let’s just all stick with putting 100 per cent of the blame on Tuchel. There’s a cleanness to that, at least. Some comfort in these difficult times that a worthy scapegoat has been identified.

Let’s not try and confect a refereeing disgrace that simply doesn’t exist.

Look, it was clearly not a good idea for several

Argentina

players to parade around after the game with that ‘LAS MALVINAS SON ARGENTINAS’ banner.

It was provocative, unnecessary and just a very clear breach of FIFA’s rules against such political messaging

. A fine will inevitably be issued.

But one does have to marvel at the sight of

of all outlets being outraged by a banner they describe as ‘deplorable’ and ‘disgusting’ within the first two paragraphs of a piece foaming at the mouth with rage at Jonny Foreigner daring to behave in this fashion.

One thing you can always say about The Sun, of course, is that they would absolutely never use political or war-based historical tensions with certain nations to jingoistically fuel their coverage of

international football matches.

They have always carried themselves with a certain quiet dignity in that regard.

And

continue their policy of pretending to have forgotten, well, pretty much everything they’ve ever said around previous England-Argentina games by suggesting that the fan who interrupted a Sky News segment by saying ‘Shall we talk about the Falklands?’ was issuing a ‘bizarre

rant’ rather than merely echoing what we assume is one of the stock opening gambits for The Sun’s morning editorial meetings.

–

Thursday, 16 July 2026

While we’re here it does seem strangely, pathetically fitting that this self-pitying, dignity-shedding lashing out on camera may well in time come to be considered England’s version of The Succulent Chinese Meal.

John Cross’

post-mortem in the Mirror contains pretty much the same themes as everyone else’s. Mainly entirely understandable bafflement at just how pitiful was England’s reaction to going 1-0 up in a game going largely to plan up to that moment.

But it also has this curious little dig.

But then Fernandez whipped a shot from the edge of the box which flew into the far corner. He never seems to do that for Chelsea.

Now, Enzo Fernandez has not had an entirely smooth career at Chelsea. Angling for a move away so determinedly that you end up getting banned by your own club is sub-optimal.

But the idea he ‘never seems’ to score goals for Chelsea is an odd stick with which to beat him.

He’s got 31 goals (and 30 assists, for what it’s worth) from 169 games in Chelsea’s midfield. That’s a lot more than never.

He even made it to double figures for goals in last season’s Premier League despite spending half the season in a self-indulgent huff.

Overall, he’s scored pretty much one goal every five and a half games across his Chelsea career.

But he’s clearly a different and far more committed beast when he puts on that

shirt and scores

eight goals in 48 appearances which is

not as good as his Chelsea scoring rate.

Not for the

Daily Star

the simple approach every other outlet has taken with the news of Jude Bellingham giving Valentin Barco a slap after last night’s match.

Truth behind Jude Bellingham ‘slap’ revealed as England star left furious

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