It just wouldn’t be England if there wasn’t an international break like this one. Thomas Tuchel had barely put a foot wrong since taking charge at the beginning of last year but for him this is a rite of passage; an inevitable and essential component of being in the Impossible Job.
England were pretty diabolical against Japan but what was most impressively surprising about the performance was watching, live, the Tuchel project wither into pretty much every other England incarnation this century. A promising start to the game gave way to a profound sense of meaninglessness, and all the supposed fluidity and hyper-modernity of Tuchel congealed into a familiar blob.
You cannot escape it. This is England, a nation so wracked with anxiety, so obsessed with its own confusing hybrid of self-loathing and self-aggrandisement, that it is stuck in a forever-loop of doom: white shirts passing the ball slowly from side to side against the backdrop of an eerily quiet Wembley bowl. Tuchel, this is the real deal. This is what being England manager means.
There was already a whiff of doubt hanging over the camp this week after the draw against Uruguay, when a tepid performance from an England C team made journalists and supporters hastily rewrite their previous takes on the staggered 35-man camp and declare the experiment a hubristic failure. Again, Thomas, welcome to the real England: a place of angry and reactionary pundits gleefully indulging the nation’s collective death drive.
The reality of the situation, however, is actually a lot more benign. Nothing that happens in March matters. Nothing.
This month England’s exhausted first-team players are focused entirely on domestic pursuits (or simply absent through injury) while those fighting for a seat on the plane are inevitably weighed down by the pressures of trying to individually stand out in a team game. Every single player who represented England over the last two weeks was distracted for one reason or another, with the vast majority suffering from the physical and psychological fatigue that comes from knowing the March friendlies are among the least important matches they will ever play.
Tuchel knows this. Part of the justification for the staggered squad was likely as distraction, creating a deliberately boring and pointless occasion so that England could drift through a boring and pointless week. He spoke openly about how clubs hate this window and see no purpose in it. This, then, was an exercise in getting through unscathed, without making memories.
Which, of course, he did not manage. The 1-0 defeat to Japan is potentially damaging but it ought to be clear that what faces England in the heat of North America is markedly different from whatever Tuesday night was, especially given that they toiled without Harry Kane, Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham, and Reece James, arguably England’s five most talented footballers.
All we learnt was that if England are without their five best players this summer then they won’t play very well, at least not in the first couple of matches while they seek to find new rhythms. To which the only reasonable response is, well, duh.
That being said, there were miniature lessons, tiny teachings for Tuchel to grab onto. Phil Foden didn’t work as a false nine and Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Dominic Solanke both failed to make an impact, which points to Ollie Watkins returning to play as the backup in June, an outcome that was frankly always likely considering Watkins is just re-entering a patch of good form for Aston Villa.
The case against Kobbie Mainoo and for James Garner might be made, the former looking a little lost as Japan counter-attacked through the middle and the latter standing out against Uruguay. Elliot Anderson and Rice are guaranteed starters but there is space for a third figure to emerge as the go-to option off the bench and, right now, the “mini-Valverde” Garner looks keen.
The only other intriguing nugget was seeing Tuchel resort to long-ball, target-man football in the final ten minutes against Japan, with Harry Maguire playing as an auxiliary striker and Dan Burn making a nuisance of himself, too.
A lot of England commenters have scoffed at this tactic as a sign of desperation, an admittance of failure, but it can only be good news that Tuchel has the tactical dexterity (and humility) to try things out when the going gets tough.
Hopefully the late flurry of shots it ignited, and the space Tino Livramento kept finding on the right side as Japan dropped deeper and deeper, convinces Tuchel to recall Trent Alexander-Arnold to the setup. He is the ideal deep-lying playmaker and quarter-back-style crosser for situations like those.
But these are slim pickings. The real lesson is that there is no lesson. Nothing can be known or understood until England’s World Cup gets under way on June 17 and until then, for the sake of our own sanity, we should simply ignore the noise of a March defeat that meant nothing and that nobody will remember.
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