July 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nOn the game itself, Tuchel told BBC Sport: “[More stressful] than we’d have liked, but if everyone gets what they like, we’d get an early goal, and another goal \u2013 that’s not how it is.<\/p>\n
“You have to deal with the situation as it comes. It was difficult because they got a very early goal, but after the first hydration break, we had three, four, five big chances and maybe a penalty situation.<\/p>\n
“We kept knocking. Their goalkeeper made unbelievable saves. The reaction and the belief was one of a kind; we found a way to win \u2013 well deserved.<\/p>\n
“We want to make it easy, but if you come back from 1-0 down, and you need the last quarter of a match to bring it back, these are the experiences that give you genuine belief, so you don’t need a manager to tell you, because you felt it.<\/p>\n
“Now they felt it, then they had the reward in front of our fans. They are well aware of what they did, what it took, and they’re a team that’s fully committed and full of belief.”<\/p>\n
DR Congo’s defeat to England means eight of the 10 African teams to play in the World Cup knockout stages have lost their first such match (W2).<\/p>\n
They had put in a strong display in Atlanta Stadium, though they failed to create too many chances, managing just seven shots, including one against the woodwork.<\/p>\n
Head coach Sebastien Desabre remained positive following the full-time whistle and was thrilled with how his side competed at their first World Cup in 52 years.<\/p>\n
“When you represent the national \u200bteam, you have to leave a good image behind, and this, I believe, we did,” \u200bsaid Desabre.<\/p>\n
“We are more proud than disappointed. We are disappointed to be leaving the World \u200bCup, of course, but we scored five goals in the tournament, and played much \u200bhigher-ranked teams and managed good results.<\/p>\n
“We wanted to use the width of the field and needed space. We also wanted to close the centre better and cut the road to [Elliot] Anderson, who is important to the English build-up.<\/p>\n
“We managed \u200bto corner England, but they reacted, and \u2060that is the capacity of these big teams. It took the best striker in the world to save them, and that’s what \u200bhappens against these big nations.<\/p>\n
“We did what we could; we \u200bwere close \u2060to winning, but it can also be seen as a victory of sorts for us.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Read More<\/a>SoccerNews Editorial Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soccer Thomas Tuchel likened Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Erling Haaland to “sharks who smell blood”\u00a0after the England captain’s heroics against DR Congo. England looked set to be on the end of a World Cup upset in the round of 32 after Brian Cipenga’s early goal gave DR Congo something to defend. However, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":916948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33512,22673,2005],"tags":[72634,42860],"class_list":["post-916947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mbappe","category-messi","category-soccer","tag-mbappe","tag-messi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}