This was the game that many hoped would be the World Cup Final, and that neither team wanted to play in. Ten goals later, nobody wanted it to end, with two teams playing as if they were back in the school playground, carefree and uninhibited.

The third-place play-off between England and France at the 2026 World Cup produced the kind of open, flowing, end-to-end football that both sets of supporters had been hoping for all tournament. The bitter disappointment of semi-final defeats against Argentina and Spain exposed the managers of both teams to heavy criticism for their team selection and tactical approach.

This was the match that revealed what both teams are capable of. Which raises the question neither manager will want to hear: where was this in the semi-finals?

England scored first against Argentina, then spent the remaining 37 minutes with only 12% possession. Led by Lionel Messi, Argentina went on the offensive. England retreated, replaced strikers for defenders to protect what they had, and eventually lost it.

France, a team capable of the most expansive attacking football in the world, found themselves contained by a disciplined Spain side that kept the ball and prevented Mbappé and his teammates from playing their own game.

Both teams left their respective semi-finals having shown a fraction of what they are capable of. Then they played each other for third, and gave the world the best game of the tournament.

The psychology of having nothing to lose

Sports psychologists describe two distinct states that athletes occupy in high-pressure situations: challenge and threat.

In a challenge mode, you perceive your resources as sufficient to meet the demands of the moment. You are energised, free to express yourself, focused on what you can do. In a threat mode, the demands feel larger than the resources available. You focus on what might go wrong rather than what you might achieve. The same pressure, in the same stadium, with the same players, produces a fundamentally different performance depending on which mindset your team occupies.

Research by sports psychology teams at the University of Exeter has established that athletes in a challenge posture consistently outperform those operating in a threat frame. Measuring cardiovascular markers and decision-making performance across elite sport, the Exeter research found that athletes who felt genuinely equipped to meet the demands of a situation were more accurate, faster in decision-making, and more emotionally controlled than those who felt overwhelmed by them. The difference between England and France in their semi-finals and England and France in the third-place play-off is not a difference of talent or fitness or formation. It is a difference of mindset.

Argentina’s manager Lionel Scaloni, watching his own players operate in exactly this mode, described what it looked like from the other side. “They’re playing like they’re seven or eight years old. They’re not thinking about ‘oh, what’s going to happen if we miss.'” 

The third-place play-off removes the threat almost entirely. The trophy is already out of reach, and the pressure to protect a result is gone. Both teams walked onto the pitch with nothing to lose, and the football reflected it within minutes.

What loss aversion does to a team

England’s retreat after scoring against Argentina is a painful example of one of the most studied phenomena in behavioural economics, this time wearing pink football boots.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s prospect theory, which won Kahneman the Nobel Prize in Economics, established that the pain of losing something already held is approximately twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining something equivalent. When England took the lead, the psychological objective shifted. They were no longer playing to score goals. They were playing to protect one. That shift from pursuit to preservation, reinforced by defensive substitutions, handed Argentina exactly the space they needed.

Research on professional football confirms the pattern directly. As teams hold a hard-won lead, they typically reduce their attacking intensity. The team that is behind intensifies theirs. Reflecting on his side’s semi-final comeback, Scaloni said: “I think that this team plays the best when we are facing adversity. The opponent hesitates a bit, we smell blood, and we go for it.”

The mathematics of defending a lead, counterintuitively, tends to make the lead harder to defend. What felt like the rational response to a dangerous situation was the response most likely to end it badly. England took the lead against Croatia in the 2018 World Cup semi-final and ultimately lost 2-1. The weight of expectation replaces the freedom to play, extending the sixty years of hurt for England.

France’s semi-final arrived at the same outcome by a different route. Richard Perrin, Associate Dean at EDHEC Business School, identifies the structural decision that set the conditions: Deschamps deployed all four of his attacking stars simultaneously, doubling down on France’s primary strength. The decision left France without the midfield depth needed to contest or disrupt Spain’s possession structure. Spain exploited the gap methodically.

Kylian Mbappé acknowledged that France had failed to execute the pressing game they intended. Spain’s possession structure bypassed the press before it could function, and France found themselves passive within a system they lacked the tools to break. When it became clear the plan was not working, Deschamps made no meaningful adjustment. There was no Plan B.

Perrin frames the underlying leadership failure in terms that extend well beyond football. “When conditions change, leaders sometimes have to sacrifice or adapt their main asset to survive.” Deschamps committed entirely to what France do best, found that Spain had specifically prepared to neutralise it, and then held the same course as the match slipped away.

Two different managerial decisions, England’s retreat into self-protection and France’s over-commitment to identity without adaptation, produced two teams unable to access what they were actually capable of.

Teams that play without fear

In the 72nd minute against Argentina, when England were leading 1-0, Thomas Tuchel reached for his substitution board and made a tactical statement. He withdrew Anthony Gordon, the man who had scored the goal, and introduced three defenders. His post-match press conference projected confidence in the decisions. But the substitution board had already delivered a different message to every player on the pitch, one no team talk could unsend. They were no longer there to win, they were there not to lose.

Argentina had prepared for a different England. They expected Tuchel to introduce Saka or Madueke, players with the pace to stretch the game in transition. The defensive shift reportedly left them shocked. Senior England players were apparently bemused. Tuchel’s instinct to protect, made visible through his substitutions, had inadvertently solved Argentina’s problem for them.

Julia Milner, Professor of Leadership at EDHEC Business School, has studied exactly this dynamic. Her research, published in HBR France, identifies the gap that Tuchel’s substitutions exposed: “There’s a difference between feeling confident in your role as a leader and giving the impression of being self-assured. Ideally, these two aspects should coincide, but this is not always the case.”

Leaders communicate their confidence, or their lack of it, through action more than through words. Self-confidence is not a personality trait that some people have and others lack. It is a skill, developed deliberately through the right environment, the right feedback.

Richard Perrin, explains what this means for how a squad is built over time. “The beliefs a team holds about what is possible, the habits of mind under pressure, the shared sense of purpose at the highest stakes, are not formed in the dressing room before kick-off. They are built across months of working together, and they are revealed in the moment a manager fearfully reaches for the substitution board.“

The case for optimism in 2028

Neither England nor France have added another star to their shirts. But now they know what they look like when they play without fear, and the answer is extraordinary.

Ten goals and the game of the tournament is meagre consolation for what might have been. Neither squad will change fundamentally between now and Euro 2028. The players who produced one of the most open and exciting matches of this World Cup are the same players who will prepare for the next competition. The architecture of two genuinely outstanding international sides is intact and largely young.

What the Euros 2028 requires is not new talent. It is the management philosophy that takes what was visible in that third-place match and makes it available in the semi-final and the final. 

The best-performing organisations in business do not play differently in high-pressure situations because they are braver than their competitors. They perform consistently because the culture they have built does not distinguish between safe moments and dangerous ones. The self-belief that produces ten goals in a third-place play-off and the self-belief that holds nerve in a World Cup semi-final are the same quality, accessed under different conditions. 

Both managers watched a third-place play off that produced football they had not managed to summon when it mattered most. The potential was never in doubt. The question is who learns from it first.

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