ESPN’s Taylor Twellman Breaks Down the Argentina vs England World Cup Semi

England reached a World Cup semifinal against Argentina by doing the hard things, beating Mexico in Mexico City and following it up, and their coach responded by calling it lucky. That word set off a small storm. Jude Bellingham's reaction to Thomas Tuchel's quote was a flat "whatever," and Rich wanted to know whether that was tough love or friction.

Taylor Twellman read it as the former. He pointed to Harry Kane, who defended Bellingham by noting the reality of the moment. "It's two minutes after a game. You get told a quote, you react," Twellman said, paraphrasing Kane's point that a player in the thick of the battle is going to stick up for himself and his team. After the game, Twellman said, Tuchel and company hashed it out, and some of the tension was media framing more than a real rift.

The larger point, in Twellman's read, is a German manager keeping a group focused. England has a game breaker in Kane and a game changer in Bellingham, and the players are feeling themselves. Tuchel is making sure that confidence does not tip into complacency, because beating Argentina and Lionel Messi will demand England's absolute best. Twellman thinks they can do it. He also thinks it will require perfection.

On the other side, he leaned into the idea that Argentina has gotten very lucky, a conversation he and Rich had started at the American Century Championship. But Twellman does not stop there. "I've always been a firm believer you make your own luck," he said. And he reframed Argentina's run as something other than anxiety for Messi. This team already won the World Cup for him three and a half years ago in the Middle East. The burden of never having won one is gone. Now the energy is about sending him off with the right gift.

Rich pushed him toward the spicier theory, that FIFA has a thumb on the scale for Argentina. Twellman would not go there. He acknowledged the VAR call that wiped out an Egyptian goal, a decision that went back more than 100 yards from goal and raised eyebrows because people had not seen that in a while. He thought the call was harsh and that the goal should have stood. But he noted that Egypt still gave up three goals in the final 13 minutes, so the result likely holds regardless. Conspiracy, in his view, is a bridge too far. Argentina, with the luck and the belief they carry, would have won anyway.