ATLANTA STADIUM \u2014<\/strong> Perhaps Marc Gu\u00e9hi simply refuses to think past Wednesday\u2019s monster FIFA World Cup semifinal between his England and Lionel Messi\u2019s Argentina.<\/p>\n Maybe Gu\u00e9hi, as a devout Christian, just doesn\u2019t want to tempt fate. Or maybe the Three Lions center back\u00a0genuinely has no idea if this star-studded England squad can do in the next five days what none before it has in almost 60 years: reach a World Cup final and take that sparkling golden trophy back home to the country that invented the planet\u2019s most popular sport.<\/p>\n “I don’t know \u2014 it\u2019s in God’s hands,” Gu\u00e9hi said when asked by a reporter on Tuesday if this might finally be England\u2019s moment.\u00a0“All I know is that we’re here right now, and we’re going to give everything that we have.”<\/p>\n Marc Gu\u00e9hi prays following England’s 2026 World Cup quarterfinal win against Norway. (Photo by Peter Joneleit\/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n It\u2019s going to take all they\u2019ve got to beat the defending World Cup champs.<\/p>\n Not only does La Albiceleste boast the incomparable Messi, who, at 39, leads the tournament with eight goals along with France’s Kylian Mbapp\u00e9. (Les Bleus lost the other semifinal to Spain on Tuesday.)<\/p>\n They also own the all-time series against England in the knockout stage of the World Cup, having knocked out their cross-Atlantic nemesis at both the 1986 and 1998 events.<\/p>\n That\u2019s ancient history, of course. None of the 26 men on Thomas Tuchel\u2019s World Cup roster were born before the former; only a few were old enough to remember the latter.<\/p>\n Yet every English soccer player \u2014 and every Argentine, too \u2014 grew up hearing about those games. Depending on their persuasion, they learned about how Diego Maradona scored either the greatest goal in World Cup history (his 60-yard slalom through what felt like England\u2019s entire team) or the most infamous (the one he punched, undetected, into the English net and later dubbed the “Hand of God”). About how Diego Simeone, whose son is on this current Argentina squad, got David Beckham sent off en route to Argentina\u2019s shootout win in the quarterfinals at France ’98.<\/p>\n The history is there, whether either side wants to admit it.<\/p>\n “That was before my time,” England defender Ezri Konsa said on Tuesday. “We just have to focus on ourselves, try and forget about the history.”<\/p>\n Which makes sense.<\/p>\n Still, Tuchel understands that when two of the most soccer-crazy nations on Earth meet, their shared history will always add a little extra spice \u2014 even in a match with so much at stake already. Or perhaps because of it.<\/p>\n “I would say it’s irrelevant, but I’m not sure,” Tuchel said when asked if the history between the nations matters. “The players are very aware \u2014 of both countries \u2014 what it means to them. “You cannot just say it\u2019s just another football match.\u00a0<\/p>\n “But as a coach, we do exactly that,” he continued. “We don’t speak about the historic events, but yeah, the magnitude of the match is just what it is. I think it does not help if we engage emotionally.”<\/p>\n That said, Tuchel and his team “expect an emotional match, an intense match” on Wednesday, he said. “I expect a match with a lot of momentum swings.”<\/p>\n And the wild card, naturally, is Messi.<\/p>\n “How he carries that team is just absolutely incredible,” Tuchel said of the GOAT. “He is the key player in any team.\u00a0<\/p>\n “You see that they love to play in the middle of the pitch,” he added. “They’re playing through gaps, and once Leo Messi has the ball, the movement starts. If you analyze the matches, you feel like he sees stuff just earlier than anyone else on the field. It’s like the ball just drops to him, he finds the gap, he makes two meters space for his left foot, and then executes on the very highest level.”<\/p>\n “So there’s a lot to take care of,” Tuchel concluded. “But we are here to play our way.”<\/p>\n “It’s not just him on the field,” Gu\u00e9hi said of Messi. “He\u2019s got other really good players on the team.”<\/p>\n Lionel Messi in Argentina’s 2026 World Cup quarterfinal win against Switzerland. (Photo by Lars Baron\/Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY ATLANTA STADIUM \u2014 Perhaps Marc Gu\u00e9hi simply refuses to think past Wednesday\u2019s monster FIFA World Cup semifinal between his England and Lionel Messi\u2019s Argentina. Maybe Gu\u00e9hi, as a devout Christian, just doesn\u2019t want to tempt fate. Or maybe the Three Lions center back\u00a0genuinely has no idea if this star-studded England squad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}