Thomas Tuchel has insisted that he “100 per cent” still wants to coach England at Euro 2028.

England’s painful 2-1 semi-final defeat to Argentina on Wednesday night has put pressure on Tuchel, who signed a new contract in February to cover the next two years.

Despite England’s loss — which they led 1-0 with five minutes remaining — Tuchel said afterwards that he does want to take the team forward. “100 per cent,” Tuchel said. “There is still enough to improve, and I am more than happy to do that.”

Tuchel has the Football Association’s full support to continue. FA chief executive Mark Bullingham posted on LinkedIn that “Thomas and the coaches will raise everyone for that and then lead us into qualification for our home Euros in 2028”.

Tuchel said that he had “loved every day” of England’s World Cup campaign, which will end in Miami with the third-place play-off game against France on Saturday. But he believes his team need to “step up to the next level” from here.

“I said after the Norway game that I see a disconnect from what I see in training on a football level, and within the games,” Tuchel said. “I think we can impose ourselves more on the ball. I still think we can show how good football players we are. I think that is still in us, as I see it in training and in every camp. And here also at the World Cup. I still feel there is an extra level that we need to conquer and need to step up to the next level to get the big prize.”

Tuchel attributed England’s defeat to a change in momentum “in ball possession” after Anthony Gordon’s 55th-minute goal. And he said that keeping the ball under pressure is not part of England’s DNA.

“I think ball possession plays a crucial role,” Tuchel said. “It’s maybe not in our DNA like it is in the Spanish DNA or Argentinian or Brazilian DNA. To take the ball, control the game and the ball, which is also a big problem.”

When asked whether it is an English mentality to sit back and defend when ahead in big games, Tuchel said: “If it happens, then it has to be changed.”

Despite the result, Tuchel said that he was happy with his players, some of whom experienced a second semi-final defeat in three World Cups.

“I’m very pleased with them and I enjoyed every single day,” Tuchel said. “And I enjoyed every single minute of the first 55. Because I think we were there, ready to go for it, not be passive and actually go for it and try. We just couldn’t cope with the momentum swing.”

SPA, Belgium — Oscar Piastri says he feels “very comfortable” with his position at McLaren and will be racing for the team next year despite its recent links with Max Verstappen.

Ahead of last month’s Austrian Grand Prix, it emerged that Verstappen’s camp had approached McLaren for a conversation about a potential future race seat for the four-time world champion.

Zak Brown, McLaren Racing’s CEO, said at the following race at Silverstone that talks “didn’t go anywhere” as both Piastri and Lando Norris, his world champion teammate, are under long-term contracts with the team.

That failed to prevent another round of speculation linking Verstappen with a shock move from Red Bull to McLaren as early as next year in the lead-up to this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa.

But Piastri offered a straightforward response when he was asked on Thursday if he would be racing for McLaren next year.

“Yes,” Piastri said, his initial one-word reply sparking some chuckles among the assembled reporters. “I didn’t realise it was a point of contention, but yes.”

Piastri penned his latest long-term deal with McLaren on the eve of the 2025 season, and led the majority of last year’s world championship before ultimately finishing third, 10 points shy of Norris in the final standings.

In an exclusive interview with The Athletic in May, Piastri stressed his belief that he can become world champion in the future with McLaren, while Brown also expressed faith in the Australian to achieve that goal in a McLaren car.

Asked by The Athletic on Thursday at Spa if he’d found the noise surrounding his future ahead of Spa unsettling at all, Piastri said he’d “obviously seen some of it and heard some of it” but felt “very comfortable with where I am and where I sit.”

Piastri added: “Zak and Andrea (Stella, McLaren’s team principal) and the whole team have been great through all that, very reassuring. I’ve been the same for them.

“Clearly, Max is feeling… I don’t know, maybe he’s not in a great position at the moment, or exploring options. It was the same thing last year with him and Mercedes, so it’s nothing new.

“But I’m very happy with where I’m at, where things are at, and how it’s all going.”

Verstappen is yet to publicly confirm his plans for next year. Although he is under contract with Red Bull to the end of 2028, the team has struggled for performance this year, leaving the Dutchman seventh in the drivers’ championship with just two podium finishes to his name.

Such a low championship position could allow Verstappen to trigger an exit clause in his Red Bull contract and leave him free to explore options away from the team if he desires.

Verstappen is contract at Red Bull until 2028 (Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)

During Thursday’s FIA news conference, Verstappen stated there was no update to give on his future and that he made “nothing” of the recent speculation. He also deflected a question about having a date in mind to make a decision, saying there was “nothing to say from my side.”

It was not until the end of July last year that Verstappen went on record to say he would be staying at Red Bull for 2026, moving to end speculation at the Hungarian Grand Prix ahead of the summer break.

Verstappen has always maintained he would be the one to provide an update on his future, and reiterated that point when asked on Thursday if he would be driving for Red Bull next year.

“I don’t want to go here and say yes or no, and this and that, about my future,” Verstappen said. “I’ve said already many times that if there was something new, I would say it myself.”

In a crackdown that has rankled some front offices across the league, Major League Baseball has effectively outlawed the growing practice of using league-provided dugout iPads to access generative artificial intelligence, which some teams had increasingly leaned upon to help shape in-game strategy.

According to a commissioner’s office memo obtained by The Athletic, teams were pushing the boundaries of guidelines governing the use of technology by “in many cases” installing custom apps that expanded the use of the iPads “beyond their originally intended purpose to include recommendations regarding substitutions, pitch calling, and other in-game decisions traditionally made by players and coaches.”

As much as a third of the league used the dugout iPads for at least one of these purposes, according to people with knowledge of the technology who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. The league memo was issued June 11 and gave teams more than a month to adjust before the ban took effect on Wednesday, in time for the start of the season’s second half Thursday.

The mid-season policy change has been met with frustration by some front-office members tasked with innovation. “It’s caused quite the stir,” said one high-ranking official of an MLB team’s research and development department. But even members of more data-friendly front offices say the trend raised eyebrows within the industry because of how many decisions made by managers and coaches could be aided by or even potentially replaced by technology, such as pitch calling or player substitutions.

The sport’s competition committee, which includes representatives from both the league office and the players’ union, seemed to harbor similar concerns. The committee’s review ultimately found “all clubs were compliant” with the league’s rules governing sign stealing and electronic-device usage, per MLB’s memo. The tech ban therefore did not come with punishment.

However, the issue proved urgent enough for the committee to act mid-season in hopes of curbing the growth of these apps.

Said one front office executive: “Gotta stop the cheating before there’s cheating now.”

MLB declined comment but referred to the memo, which was issued by the league’s executive vice president of baseball operations, Morgan Sword. The union also declined comment.

League-provided iPads were first introduced into dugouts league-wide in 2016, though their usage was more tightly regulated in 2021 after sign-stealing scandals rocked the sport.

“For the first time, we’re going to be allowing players to view live in-game video via an iPad in the dugout or bullpen during the game,” former MLB executive Chris Marinak said in March 2021. “The iPads are issued by MLB and fully controlled so that the players can only use the app that we’ve put on the device. They can’t access the internet for browsing or social media or any other kind of functions. The iPads are completely locked down and monitored with the software that we have on there.”

In-game video has been and remains available but only on a delay, usually only once an inning is completed. Rules posted in every clubhouse also prohibit non-field personnel from coming into the dugout during the game, an effort to limit inputting live information into the iPads.

But over time, players and teams have pushed for a loosening of some restrictions surrounding the iPads. Coaches and players wanted the ability to customize what the tablets could do for them, and the league allowed these liberties.

Entering this season, the league-issued iPads provided access to data through three tabs, according to a person with knowledge of the system who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be able to speak candidly. The first contained all the MLB-provided Statcast data and multiple video angles. The second tab contained all data related to ABS. The third tab — known across the league as the “custom tab” — housed each team’s specialized data, akin to information found in old-school, paper-filled binders. Examples include matchup info, defensive positioning and player tendencies, which teams argued were necessities.

Going forward, teams can still upload static information, which is data that would be available before first pitch, though clubs were told that anything uploaded would ultimately remain subject to review by MLB.

Pitch-calling from the dugout may be at the center of this battle, and is one of the usages the league appears to be targeting.

The Athletic canvassed multiple players, general managers, coaches, research and development analysts and other front-office executives with knowledge of dugout iPad usage for their thoughts on the change. They weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the league’s reasoning for the change or their own teams’ use of customizable apps. A consensus emerged: some teams input information from the ongoing game to improve the generative AI models’ ability to anticipate the next pitch that would be thrown, or to recommend what should be thrown.

Jack Lambert, director of baseball operations at Driveline Baseball, an independent player development operation, said he believed pitch-calling was a logical way teams could leverage the tech.

“With someone live-scoring the game, teams could chart pitch type and location to get dynamically updating game plans,” Lambert said. “Those plans could determine if their approach at the plate should change as they face the lineup a second, third time in the game, and could also be applied to live pitch-calling.”

While it’s unknown exactly how many teams have used the league-provided iPads for pitch-calling, the practice of calling pitches from the dugout — rather than delegating that responsibility, as is traditional — has grown. The Miami Marlins spearheaded the trend of having pitches called from the dugout and other teams have subsequently adopted it, as well. Multiple people briefed on the set-ups said that currently as many as six teams are making “pitch suggestions” from the dugout, as some clubs call them.

It’s unclear exactly how many teams were using the iPads with live in-game information, because teams are reluctant to talk about their innovations and lose any possible edge. But the league’s effort to change what’s visible on the tablets suggests the league was concerned.

Now, teams seemingly must return to old-fashioned way of running numbers before the game. Fans will still get to blame the human managers for strategic mistakes, at least for now.

— The Athletic’s Evan Drellich, Brittany Ghiroli and Jayson Stark contributed to this report.