IF

Here's why England and Argentina should both want Spain to beat France tonight — and it's not for the reason you think... A lot has been made of France as clear tournament favourites. I don't buy it. Yes, they are the most lethal team with the most impressive array of attacking threats — and yes, for that reason they should be marginal favourites — but that doesn't mean they are obviously the best team. The truth is, nobody should be staking their entire mortgage or reputation on any of the four contenders at this point. They're almost impossible to separate. But separate them we will, because that's human nature — we are wired to track what's different about them rather than what's the same. It's a survival instinct. But in doing so, we have a natural tendency to overweight what we see. Because we don't die if we detect a tiger that turns out not to be a tiger. So what I'm observing with France is a combination of the halo effect, anchoring bias and confirmation bias. They have serious depth and quality in attack. They started the tournament well and continue to play well in virtually every game, smashing teams who are clearly weaker than them. But answer this: Do you really know much more about France now than you did before the tournament began? Has anything really changed? Or are you just more confident about them? I'm seeing a lot of tweets about strength of opposition faced up to this point (based on FIFA rankings) but not so much about tournament conditions. France and Spain are a good match for the first semi final because they've both had it easy in the latter regard — France have barely travelled, while Spain's knockout route has been exclusively in climate-controlled venues. For both teams, this will be the first game where they have to take a twin approach and fully account for what the opposition bring rather than focus mostly on themselves. These are not 80-20 games now. It's not even 60-40. We're as close to 50-50 as you're going to get and that changes the dynamics entirely. We haven't seen either team in this context yet. Maybe Spain have more valuable intelligence on France than vice-versa. Let's see. However, there's one good reason why England and Argentina should both want Spain to win and I believe it's connected to the emotional context directly created by what went before. For me, the modern age of the World Cup began in 1974. That's when the presidency of Joao Havelange began and FIFA embraced a new commercial model, with a new trophy to replace the old Jules Rimet trophy kept by Brazil for winning three times. Since then, 13 finals have produced 18 teams returning to the final within 20 years of their previous final — meaning, the last final appearance is a living memory for the players on the pitch, if not always a playing memory. Of those 18 teams, 15 reversed the previous result. Check out the list: Did it reverse? Yes ✅ No ❌ 1974 — 🇩🇪 West Germany ✅ 1978 — 🇳🇱 Netherlands ❌ 1982 — 🇮🇹 Italy ✅ 1982 — 🇩🇪 West Germany ✅ 1986 — 🇦🇷 Argentina ❌ 1986 — 🇩🇪 West Germany ❌ 1990 — 🇩🇪 West Germany ✅ 1990 — 🇦🇷 Argentina ✅ 1994 — 🇮🇹 Italy ✅ 1998 — 🇧🇷 Brazil ✅ 2002 — 🇧🇷 Brazil ✅ 2002 — 🇩🇪 Germany ✅ 2006 — 🇮🇹 Italy ✅ 2006 — 🇫🇷 France ✅ 2014 — 🇩🇪 Germany ✅ 2018 — 🇫🇷 France ✅ 2022 — 🇦🇷 Argentina ✅ 2022 — 🇫🇷 France ✅ Make of these numbers what you will. Personally, I think there's a very strong case to be made for the pressure being asymmetric on the returning finalist — the previous loser has to heal the pain of the last occasion, the previous winner can only match what happened last time, they can never better it. If this pattern is going to hold for a 13th consecutive time, then that means either France winning the final or Spain losing the final. If France beat Argentina, then the pattern will stretch to 17/20 and 14 on the spin. For me, this is the single biggest reason why both England and Argentina should be wanting Spain to win tonight.