Thomas Tuchel says England should have beaten Spain despite too many 'clear-cut mistakes'

Thomas Tuchel argued England ought to have been the first team to beat Spain in 39 matches even though he admitted they made too many clear-cut errors.

England contributed a great deal to an entertaining match, both in the quality of their attacking play and at times their calamity when they had the ball deep.

Had Harry Kane not hit the crossbar with his 53rd-minute penalty, the European and world champions could have been put to a real test. But as it was, they lost their opening game of this season's Nations League campaign 3-2 at Wembley.

“I think we did everything today to beat Spain,” said Tuchel, who has been under pressure since England's World Cup semi-final defeat to Argentina in July. “Details matter on this kind of level.

“The amount of mistakes, clear-cut mistakes, was too high on our side today unfortunately and in the last 20 metres they were more composed and more clinical.

“Still, we had them and we had the chance to beat them.

“We will keep on pushing this team. We proved at the World Cup that we are capable of doing it in tournaments.

“Today we cannot prove it with the result but I think the way we played was enough to beat them, but it’s not proven in the result.”

Both Spain's first two goals were the result of errors, Marc Guehi robbed by Laine Yamal inside two minutes, and Nico O'Reilly giving the ball away to allow Alex Baena to cancel out against-the-run-of-play goals from Anthony Gordon and Harry Kane.

Other bad mistakes went unpunished.

The score was 2-1 when referee Davide Massa overturned his decision not to award a Rodri foul on Jude Bellingham after consulting the pitchside monitor. But Kane's spot kick smacked into the crossbar.

Tuchel took the performance as proof his team can deliver against the top sides, despite them having won just of their past 15 games against opponents ranked in the top ten.

And the German was irritated by questions about that record.

“That’s why I was surprised about the World Cup because I think, at the World Cup, we beat three top-ten teams,” he said.

“Interesting that in the moment where we win, nobody brings it up, but when we lose one we come up with statistics.”