​All the years that have passed since those red shirts on a summer’s day at a long-gone Wembley Stadium – the humiliations, the occasional triumph, the plentiful servings of self-pity. For a short while in Atlanta it felt like that epoch might finally be ending and all it came down to was managing the last five minutes and whatever the beleaguered referee might add.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA place at a World Cup final was within England’s grasp, a mere 60 years since the last. But just as it loomed into view, already the players and their manager were tracing an old path. The man currently in charge of the England team might be German, the players might be of a generation finessed under bold new coaching ideas, but once more a familiar anxiety took hold. England were minutes from the prize. Yet team and manager were already obeying an old instinct to sabotage the moment.England had been in retreat long before Lionel Messi served up for Enzo Fernández the goal that would level this World Cup semi-final, and then the second for Lautaro Martínez ,which would propel Argentina forward. Of course, Messi is Messi, and this Argentina team exist to exert his will on games by any means necessary. Yet, as ever, at the moment of reckoning, England demonstrated all the resistance of damp cardboard.Thomas Tuchel once again reverted to the deep defensive position. Once again, the adapted five-man back line sat on the edge of their area. Against Mexico in the last 16, Tuchel was dismissive of any suggestion he had invited pressure, asking what other option he had with just 10 men. Against Norway in the quarter-finals he did the same, once Erling Haaland was off the pitch. Against Argentina, a team accustomed to playing with it all on the line, such a move was fatal.Immediately the supporters in the stands in Atlanta, and in the streets and front rooms of England, recognised the mistake. The punditocracy on the BBC saw it, too. Former players Wayne Rooney and Joe Hart have been here before and treated this defeat much like revisiting a trauma. For the rest of us it was hard to miss: like staring into the face of the England team over the decades that have passed since 1966.Tuchel said that Argentina’s tactical changes as he saw them – two wide wingers, two central strikers – forced his hand. So too, he seemed to suggest, did the attitude of his players. He talked about them failing to be “active” as he called it, engaging their opposition and taking the game to them. But by this point those on the outside could see it more clearly than him.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThis kind of retreat, to a greater or lesser degree, was the default position of so many England teams. England led against Brazil in 2002, Croatia in 2018, Italy in 2021. Sir Gareth Southgate, a man more criticised for a reluctance to make substitutions, never went into reverse quite as spectacularly as this. The record is now two World Cup semi-finals, and