Until Gareth Southgate’s inflatable-unicorn revolution it was widely acknowledged that judging an England manager outside of tournaments was of no value whatsoever, certainly not in an era when English football’s global superiority makes qualification for World Cups and European Championships a forgone conclusion.
But the culture shift that Southgate oversaw (though still criminally underplayed by critics who misremember the toxicity that seeped out of the walls of every England camp) allows us to judge Thomas Tuchel before a real ball has been kicked.
And the impression so far is that Tuchel is doing an exceptional job.
He set the tone in his first press conference as England manager with a genius take on the old dilemma of Englishness and an England DNA. “We will inject a little bit of club football into federation football,” he said. “The Premier League is a very physical league [and] a very direct league. We should be proud enough of the culture and the style of English football and the English league to implement this.”
In one fell swoop Tuchel told us how England would play, did so with a clarity that provides focus for the media and supporters, did so by tapping into the nation’s greatest asset, the Premier League, and, most crucially, recognised that the cultural and tactical zeitgeist of the day usually defines World Cup winners.
In 2006 it was the dullness of Jose Mourinho and Rafael Benitez that reigned, and Italy with its Catenaccio duly won. In 2010 Spain embodied Pep Guardiola’s tiki-taka revolution, in 2014 Germany was the home of the gegenpressing taking over Europe, and in 2018 France’s basic midblock football aligned with Zinedine Zidane’s three-time Champions League winners Real Madrid.
Tuchel was smart. Very smart. And he’s continued in that vein for this exhausting, unwanted, nuisance March international break.
Back in that first press conference Tuchel went on to say that he wished to mimic the Premier League style by “increas[ing] the intensity in our games; the intensity, the rhythm. I want to have more touches in the opponent’s box. I want to have more ball recoveries in the opponent’s half.”
Eighteen months on and Tuchel can deftly pivot to the new normal without compromising on those initial promises. “We’re in a very physical era of the game in the Premier League and an era where set-pieces, free-kicks, corners and throw-ins are very highly rated,” Tuchel said this week.
“We need to come up with a good plan for how to defend and how to attack [set-pieces] and make it an advantage. It has to be now, in the last games before the World Cup, it has to be in our thoughts – how to change matches, how to influence matches, how to open up a match. It’s just the way it is.”
To succeed in life you need to be good and lucky, and by the looks of things Tuchel is both. International football has gone through an extended period of simplistic tactical plans, reflecting the exhaustion of the club schedule as well as the tiny windows for tactical coaching compared to the domestic game. The Premier League’s latest direction, then, is absolutely perfect for knockout football, and in Arsenal’s set-piece takers Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka England have the very best in the world.
Even on the exhaustion factor, Tuchel has plans worth remarking upon. He has called up 35 players this month in a “staggered” selection, whereby 11 senior players won’t arrive until after the first game against Uruguay, at which point a similar number of newer faces will leave the camp.
Again, the simplicity is disarming. Nobody has ever thought to do it before but Tuchel has just found a way to give players the rest they need while getting the best of both worlds: one game to work on established rhythms and one to trial those vying for the final World Cup spots.
There is still a bit of work to be done on the latter point.
England’s best XI is fairly settled, and although a question remains about whether Morgan Rogers or Jude Bellingham should start as the number ten Tuchel seems settled on Elliot Anderson, Anthony Gordon, Marc Guehi, Ezri Konsa, Nico O’Reilly and Reece James filling all the spots that aren’t automatic picks.
But Eberechi Eze could apply pressure to Gordon and Marcus Rashford on the left, both of whom seem likely to usurp Ollie Watkins as full-time deputies to Harry Kane. Meanwhile Kobbie Mainoo and Adam Wharton are worthy of a look-in even if the Anderson-Rice axis is secure, especially given that England have crashed out of three successive tournaments because tired legs became overrun in midfield.
Yet these are minor details. Tuchel knows the March international break doesn’t just evoke apathy but anger - and he won’t expect to gain much. We, like Tuchel, will learn very little about the machinations of the England setup and nothing whatsoever about how the nation will fare in the latter stages of the 2026 World Cup.
But just hearing the manager speak - and seeing the first-ever staggered squad selection - is enough to remain quietly confident that Tuchel really knows what he’s doing - and that England are ready.
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