Michael Owen scored twice against Argentina in Geneva in 2005. It was a fine evening’s work. Twenty-one years later, from the safety of his sofa, he watched Thomas Tuchel’s England squander a lead against the same opponents and reached for the broadest possible conclusion. “There should be no such thing as foreign coaches in international football,” he posted on X.

What happened in Atlanta on Wednesday deserved a more careful autopsy. Anthony Gordon put England ahead in the 55th minute. Tuchel responded by withdrawing Gordon and Declan Rice for defenders, retreating into a low block against the greatest player of all time with 35 minutes still to play. Messi found space, Enzo Fernandez equalised in the 86th minute, and Lautaro Martinez struck in stoppage time. England were out 2-1. That was a tactical failure. It was not a passport failure.

Israel knows something about this question. For a small footballing nation competing in UEFA, a confederation it joined only in 1991 after years of geopolitical exclusion from Asia, the decision of whom to place in the dugout has never been a matter of sentiment. It has been a matter of survival.

In 2000, the Israel Football Association appointed Richard Møller Nielsen, the Dane who had engineered one of football’s great miracles by leading Denmark to the 1992 European Championship. A coach recalled from the........

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