“Yeah, well, whatever.”
If England are going to win the World Cup they will have to play better than that. They will have to follow more closely the battle plan of their uber-intense head coach and his band of furrowed-brow tacticians scurrying about in the background.
More will need to be done to cope with the wilting heat and the melting brains, to cope with low blocks and the knowledge all nations hold that England – still – have a central midfield prone to getting lost in the grind.
“Yeah, well, whatever.”
Perhaps the most significant takeaway from England’s bruising, sweaty, steely 2-1 victory over Norway in the quarter-final on Saturday evening is that Thomas Tuchel is still learning how to navigate the on-the-hoof nature of international management.
That, of course, could leave England vulnerable to a more streetwise coach like Lionel Scaloni, who won the World Cup four years ago.
“Yeah, well, whatever.”
Indeed, Tuchel might have been unhappy with his players’ performance but in the cold light of day he will acknowledge the errors were his own, the decision to replace the ill Declan Rice with Eberechi Eze a mistake from which Tuchel spent the rest of the game scrambling to recover.
England were lucky, as he said: lucky that Norway’s turning of the screw in midfield after Rice’s departure did not give Tuchel his Croatia 2018 moment, because England could, probably should, have crashed out of the World Cup at the familiar old stage and to an opponent clearly their inferior.
“Yeah, well, whatever.”
Jude Bellingham’s initial response to learning Tuchel was “not happy” that England “made life very, very difficult for ourselves” will be scrutinised endlessly over the next five days. Insubordination, ego, and fear of unrest in the camp may dominate the build-up to a semi-final clash with Argentina. But any such analysis would be over-thinking an impulsive Bellingham line that neatly summed up his idiosyncratic genius.
Bellingham dismissed Tuchel just as he dismissed the pattern of the game; the unfolding narrative clarity that was beginning to weigh down his team-mates. England have never had a big-moments star like him before, which explains why he is so misunderstood. His football is not arrogant, it’s confident.
It’s not ego, it’s certainty, it’s knowing his brilliance as a cold hard fact, seeing the shape and the noise and the fear of the game around him and thinking, with every fibre of his being, “yeah, well, whatever.”
If there is friction between Tuchel and Bellingham, no matter. Here are two opposing forces who need one another: the manager a tactical nuts-and-bolts obsessive trying to perfect the system, the talisman working on pure instinct. Both want to bend the world to their will, but while Tuchel scrutinises the game-plan Bellingham shrugs and rejects it, on the pitch and in front of the microphone.
The theory goes that England cannot win the World Cup like this, that Argentina or France or Spain will punish defensive errors, overwhelm a nervous midfield, and match Bellingham with their own star power.
That might be so, but where England have the edge is that unique combination, the friction that produces heat.
Tuchel made clear missteps last night and yet he emerges with a far clearer sense of whom he can rely upon, namely Reece James and Djed Spence, while showing in a series of typically-bold second-half changes that his tactical tweaking is second to none. Yes, an error was made, but the dexterity of the correction showed Tuchel’s value as the man who builds the structure so that Bellingham can break out of it.
“World class,” was how Tuchel described Bellingham in a section of the interview not shared with the match-winner. There is no story here, although one will be confected, and besides, both parties will yield ground in the coming days, Bellingham when given the full context and Tuchel once he has had the space to analyse coolly what happened in Miami.
That analysis should lead to a couple of simple conclusions. First, that the unbearable heat explains the “sloppy” and “not fast enough” performance. Second, that for the fifth game in a row England faced reactive opposition willing to put bodies behind the ball to crowd out Harry Kane and deny Anthony Gordon and Noni Madueke the space they need.
For the first time since Croatia in the opening match, when England surged brilliantly in attack, on Wednesday Tuchel’s side face a nation willing to expand, leaving space for fast transitions. England were always supposed to excel against the stronger nations, openly acknowledging the need to get past deep-lying defences by any means necessary until they can start to play their own game.
DR Congo, Mexico, and Norway is an unusual path to a semi-final, but it isn’t kind, not to an England side prone to stale possession. The tactical preparatory work of Tuchel and his staff should flourish against Argentina. We know Bellingham will.
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