England went toe-to-toe with the world champions on Saturday and still found a way to lose 3-2, and I don’t think that’s a paradox. It’s the whole story of Thomas Tuchel’s England in one night at Wembley: brilliant in attack, generous in defence, and beaten by a squad depth they simply don’t have yet.
The game had everything. Lamine Yamal punished a Marc Guehi error inside two minutes. Anthony Gordon levelled, Harry Kane headed England in front before the break, and for about twenty minutes Wembley believed. Then Kane slipped on the turf and clattered his 54th-minute penalty off the crossbar, Álex Baena equalised six minutes later, and Mikel Oyarzabal did what he does to England, scoring the winner in the 74th. If that finish feels familiar, it should. He scored the Euro 2024 final winner against the same opponent.
The penalty wasn’t the story, the bench was
Everyone will remember the slip, and fair enough. It was England’s first missed penalty since the 2022 World Cup, and there was even a hint of a double touch that nobody ended up caring about because the ball never went in. But I watched the pattern around it, and the sequence is damning. Kane misses. Spain bring on Baena and Oyarzabal. Both change the game immediately. Baena scores within minutes of arriving, Oyarzabal finishes the job.
That’s the gap. Not effort, not tactics, not even the two defensive errors, Guehi’s dispossession and Nico O’Reilly’s loose pass, though those are becoming a worrying habit against high-pressing sides. The gap is that de la Fuente could turn to his bench and change a heavyweight away game, and Tuchel couldn’t. Spain’s unbeaten run in 90 minutes now stands at 39 matches, and it’s built on rotation as much as talent.
Why England shouldn’t panic, quite yet
Here’s my contrarian take: this was England’s best performance in a long time, and the dressing room knows it. Kane and Tuchel both spoke about going toe-to-toe with the champions, and the fan reaction reflected that. No boos at full-time, just frustration mixed with genuine pride in the fightback. Leading at half-time against this Spain side is not nothing, whatever the scoreboard says.
But the errors keep coming, and that’s the open question this Nations League group will answer. England keep gifting possession in dangerous areas, and elite opponents convert those gifts. Tuchel’s own words after the game, that they think they had them, tell you how England see it. A foundation, not a failure.
What I’d watch next is whether Tuchel hardens the defence at the cost of this attacking freedom, because you can’t have both against this level of opposition. Spain proved the details decide it. Until England stop manufacturing their own crises, the world champions will keep cashing in. And Oyarzabal, quietly, has now broken English hearts twice in two years. Somebody should really mark him.
