Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink has laid blame on the England players rather than Thomas Tuchel for the nation’s heartbreaking World Cup exit at the hands of Argentina.
Tuchel has come under heavy criticism for his tactics in the semi-final, which saw him go to five at the back and drop the team deep while England still had 20 minutes to defend their 1-0 lead, inviting Argentine pressure which sparked their late comeback.
But Hasselbaink – a former assistant of ex-England boss Gareth Southgate – has insisted the German is far from the only culpable party and pointed the finger at the poor “mentality” of his players.
“After the 1-0, when they’re going backwards, that is not Tuchel,” he said on The Good, The Bad & The Football YouTube show.
“That has nothing to do with Tuchel. That is just a mentality of the players thinking, ‘Oh, we need to defend now that 1-0’, instead of having the same kind of tactics and having the game in their half, because that’s really what they were doing.
“And then after the substitutions, that is where that is Tuchel’s decision.”
He went on to single out Jude Bellingham, England’s star man throughout the tournament who admittedly had a quiet outing against Argentina.
“He needed to do what Lionel Messi did in the last 10 to 15 minutes: just come out, just come out of it,” he added. “Come out of it a little bit and touch the ball there.”
The defeat to Argentina brought an end to Tuchel’s first major tournament in charge of the Three Lions, a role he took from Southgate with the hope that he would possess the tactical acumen to get England over the line after two Euros finals, along with a semi-final and quarter-final finish across two World Cups.
However, his position is now the subject of fan scrutiny, who were left baffled by the decisions he made that flipped momentum of the contest in Argentina’s favour.
Former Netherlands striker Hasselbaink therefore did not completely absolve Tuchel of blame, and questioned his decision to go to a five-back – something he believes Southgate would not have done during his time in the setup.
“We’re talking after the game, and it’s easy, you know, but I don’t think that Gareth would have gone to a back five,” he said. I don’t think that he would have gone to it with 20, 25 minutes before the game finishes.
“I don’t think that Steve Holland (Southgate’s assistant) would have liked him to do that. The reason why I think that is when they played Italy, they played a five; they had difficulties getting out and all that kind of stuff. I think that he would have kept it at a four. I think he would have changed the wide players and still had energy up front so that he could still press from the front and still be able to get behind their defence.”
