Saka Hits Hat-Trick as England Beat France 6-4 for Bronze

Bukayo Saka scored a hat-trick in a wild 6-4 win over France that gave England a bronze medal at the World Cup, then admitted what most had already suspected. He wanted to play more. Thomas Tuchel had left the Arsenal winger out of the semi-final defeat to Argentina in favour of Morgan Rogers, and Saka's response in Saturday's third-place play-off, two goals inside the first half among his eventual three, did the only kind of talking that gets remembered.

"I try to do my talking on the pitch"

"Of course, I would love to have played more," Saka told the BBC after the game. "But it's not the time to talk about that now. I try to do my talking on the pitch. It's done now. Move on." Asked whether it was good news for the watching Arsenal supporters to see him fit and firing, he offered the shortest answer of his tournament: "Yeah. I'm fit. I'm fit." Two sentences that carried more than most quotes manage in a paragraph.

A tournament that never quite let him in

Saka arrived in the United States carrying the bruises of a bruising Arsenal season, an anonymous night in the Champions League final capping a campaign that had troubled his final two months at the club. He did not start England's first two group games while that issue settled, and even once picked, his contribution came in flashes rather than full performances: three assists inside just 192 minutes of action by the time the tournament reached the quarter-finals. It was enough to confirm what English football already knew. Behind only Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham in the pecking order, Saka is England's most experienced and most successful forward outside that pair, an established name being managed like an emerging one.

Left out for the biggest game of the summer

None of that stopped Tuchel handing Saka's shirt to Rogers for the semi-final against Argentina, a game Rogers helped shape with the assist for Anthony Gordon's goal before England's exit. Tuchel framed the call as instinct rather than form. "He did everything right," Tuchel said of Saka. "I had just a feeling in the semi-final for Morgan Rogers that he would be involved in something special. That was it." He added a practical explanation too: "The Argentina game was so in demand that we were forced into changes because of cramps and flow of the game. Bukayo showed he was a key player, that was never a doubt. I was not even aware he had a hat-trick against France. I lost the overview of the goalscorers." An England head coach losing count of his own team's goals says as much about the chaos of Saturday's match as it does about his regard for Saka.

Two goals before the break, and a scoreline that would not sit still

If Tuchel needed reminding what he had left out, Saka delivered it inside the first half alone, scoring twice in style before adding a third as England ran out 6-4 winners in a match that bore no resemblance to the stalemate template of the semi-final. Where England had been defensive and dour against Argentina, Saturday's performance carried quality in possession, threat on the counter and a ruthlessness in front of goal that had gone missing all summer. The scoreline still found room for nerves. For the second World Cup game running, England were hanging on with 15 minutes still to play, a four-goal cushion cut back to one, and for a moment threatening to disappear altogether, before the match swung the other way again to finish 6-4.

Bronze, but not without questions

Sky Sports' Sam Blitz summed up the contradiction neatly: Tuchel may have won himself and his players a bronze medal, and the nation's best World Cup performance since 1966, but the questions over how he arrived at it are not going away. Saka came into the tournament as England's standout player on the right, and the numbers back it up: three goals and three assists from broken minutes across the tournament. Rogers supplied the assist for Gordon's goal against Argentina, but Saka, by Tuchel's own admission after the France game, is "a key player". One change might not have altered the outcome of the Argentina defeat given England's other problems that night, but Saka's ball-carrying and counter-attacking instincts, sharpened across a season of defensive resilience at Arsenal, could have offered something Tuchel's side lacked when it mattered most.

Closing the gap to France

Beating France carried weight beyond the medal itself. Tuchel used the platform to address where his side now stands against one of the tournament's superpowers. "We have the ability to close it. They have the ability to open it up again," he told BBC Sport. "Eight years ago they were the champions, four years ago they were in the final and the Nations League final. There is a slight gap, but we want to close it. I said this game is the first step to close it. We did it. We beat them. The next one is Spain in the Nations League." It is the language of a manager already looking past the tournament that just ended, towards fixtures that will decide whether Saturday's win meant anything beyond a medal ceremony.

Tuchel was just as candid about his own state of mind, with the World Cup final still to be played on Sunday. "Matches and seeing a team fight like this gives you energy," he said. "Sadness will come after. We will still feel the pain when we know that Sunday is the final. This will take a while. Overall, it gives you more energy than it takes." England's manager sounds like a man already rebuilding, even as the medal is still being handed round the dressing room.

A first World Cup final since 1966 will have to wait at least another four years, but a bronze medal secured with a hat-trick that Tuchel did not even realise had happened says plenty about where this England side now sits. Good enough to hurt Argentina for an hour. Good enough to put six past France. And still, somehow, unable to shake the sense that its head coach's biggest calls keep landing just the wrong side of right.

Sources: Sky Sports.