Anthony Gordon has urged England to abandon what he sees as an attempt to imitate Spain, insisting that controlling games “is not in the English DNA” and that the Three Lions will only win a major tournament when they play to their own strengths.
Speaking at St George’s Park on Wednesday, three days before England host the world champions at a sold-out Wembley in their UEFA Nations League opener, the Barcelona winger delivered the most pointed assessment of England’s tactical direction to come from inside the camp since the summer.
“I’m speaking from a point of view where I feel like we are trying to replicate Spain,” said Gordon, who joined Barcelona from Newcastle United for £69.3m in the summer. “Because I’m in Spain, I know we have just as good players, but they have different qualities, so why are you trying to make those players the same as the Spanish players? Because the Spanish players lack the things that we have and vice versa.”
He went further: “We can’t keep looking at other countries and trying to be like them, because we’re not them – we’re English and we have our own strengths which they don’t have. So maybe we start playing the way we’re good at.”
A direct response to Tuchel’s blueprint
The timing is impossible to ignore. When Thomas Tuchel named his 27-man squad on 18 September for four fixtures between 21 September and 6 October, the England head coach said he wanted his side to be “for 10 minutes, a little bit more like Spain” — capable of starving an opponent of the ball, killing momentum through technical control, and managing the phases of a match that England so conspicuously could not manage in Atlanta.
Gordon was careful to frame his comments as agreement rather than dissent, accepting England must improve on the ball while arguing the ceiling lies elsewhere: in physicality, directness and transition. It is a distinction with teeth. Tuchel wants England to add a Spanish gear; Gordon is questioning whether the gear exists in the gearbox at all.
Crucially, the 25-year-old refused to lay the semi-final defeat at his manager’s door. Asked about the substitution that reshaped England’s shape against Argentina, Gordon replied that “as a group everyone together should take responsibility” — defending Tuchel’s in-game adjustments while suggesting the players should simply have controlled the game better once the instruction came.
The World Cup that reframed the argument
The context is a tournament England will spend years arguing about. Their run in North America ended with a 2-1 semi-final defeat by Argentina and a chaotic 6-4 win over France in the third-place play-off — statistically England’s best World Cup finish since 1966, and still a campaign that felt like an opportunity mislaid.
Gordon himself had a strong summer: five starts, four assists and a goal against Argentina, taking him to 25 caps and four international goals. His authority on this subject is not merely rhetorical. Having spent a pre-season and the opening weeks of a La Liga campaign inside Spanish football’s most doctrinaire environment, he is the only England player who can credibly claim to have seen both models from the inside.
Spain, by contrast, arrive at Wembley with an unanswerable argument. Luis de la Fuente’s side went through the World Cup unbeaten and beat Argentina 1-0 in the final, adding the trophy to the European Championship they won by defeating England 2-1 in the Euro 2024 final. In their last five meetings, Spain have won three, drawn one and lost one. This is a rivalry England keep losing at the decisive moment.
Identity versus imitation: the old English question
Gordon is reopening a debate that has run through English football for four decades. The 1990s and 2000s produced repeated attempts to graft continental method onto English personnel — the Charter for Quality, the technical retooling of the academy system, the possession-first England DNA document published in 2014 — all of it built on the premise that England’s deficiencies were technical.
Gareth Southgate’s answer was a hybrid: control when available, pragmatism when not, two finals and a semi-final as the return. Tuchel inherited that inheritance and has spent 18 months trying to add ball dominance to it. Gordon’s intervention is effectively a vote for the opposite instinct — that England’s comparative advantage is athleticism, verticality and a forward line built to run at defences rather than pass around them.
What it means from Saturday onwards
England open Nations League A Group A3 — with Croatia and Czechia also in the section — at 19:45 BST on Saturday. Tino Livramento has withdrawn with an injury sustained in Newcastle training, while Trent Alexander-Arnold and Cole Palmer return to a squad that also features Rio Ngumoha, Myles Lewis-Skelly and Jarrad Branthwaite. Spain welcome back Fermin Lopez and Dean Huijsen.
The fixture is therefore both a competitive opener and a live experiment. If Tuchel sets England up to contest possession and they are picked apart, Gordon’s argument gains enormous weight. If England press, counter and win, a player three months into his Barcelona career will have reframed the national team’s tactical conversation from inside the dressing room.
Either way, the question Gordon asked at St George’s Park is the right one, and England have spent a generation avoiding it: are they trying to become the best version of Spain, or the best version of themselves?
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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