“You can try to kill me here, but it's my scar, it's not your scar. I have to live with it. It's not you having to live with this.”
The long months since England’s World Cup semi-final defeat to Argentina, defined by Thomas Tuchel’s extraordinary tactical cowardice and subsequent accusation the national “DNA” is primed for mental collapse, has given the England manager plenty of time to think things over.
His conclusions do nothing to turn the dial on the national mood towards him.
Perhaps the beginning of a new chapter this weekend is not an appropriate moment to rehash past failures but already the tone of media analysis is softening, so it’s worth briefly returning to the headline issue.
Tuchel was specifically hired to bring an elite mentality that would overcome England’s historic fragility in big moments, but when it came to the crunch he choked, exacerbating the problem more dramatically than Gareth Southgate ever did.
As if that wasn’t enough, he then failed spectacularly in his ambassadorial duties, blaming the cultural heritage of the nation for his fearful retreat.
Reflecting upon the summer should have brought Tuchel clarity on his own role, on the egotism of his response and the worrying disconnect between his club-football ideas and what it means to oversee a nation.
Instead, he has effectively doubled down. They are his scars, not ours.
So began another tone-deaf intervention, providing further insight into the dislocation at the heart of the Tuchel project. Here is more red meat for the rabble who would claim England should never be managed by an outsider, because even in attempting to show humility Tuchel fails in what Southgate made into the most important, and most idiosyncratic, task of the England manager: being the statesmanlike, quasi-father figure of the nation.
As a German tactician hired to be the anti-Southgate, Tuchel’s remit here is quite different from his predecessor’s, because of course to attempt his own ‘Dear England’ dance, to try the whole Rudyard Kipling thing, would be roundly mocked.
For Tuchel, the prime ministerial aspect should be the projection of Germanic self-assurance.
And so the admission this week of pain and self-doubt, intended to elicit sympathy or at least act as some form of apology, reads instead as overly vulnerable, revealing a fragility where Tuchel is supposed to project strength.
In other words, if you want to succeed in the Impossible Job – if you want those shirts to weigh less heavily – you aren’t supposed to tell us you’re scarred.
Oh, and we do have to live with it, Thomas. It’s not all about you.
“No-one is more hurt than me, no-one wanted it more. They [the decisions] can endlessly torture you.
“A key moment if I look back at it and what happened to my decision-making, we conceded a big, big chance right before the water break. And I thought: we will not survive. This is waiting for death.
“Even my mindset is maybe like: let's just overcome it. And it's too early, too early for that mindset.”
It’s certainly an interesting choice of words prior to Saturday’s attempt at a reboot. World champions Spain arrive at Wembley on a 38-game unbeaten run and with a mentality of possession suffocation.
One wonders if England will seek desperately to “overcome it”; will again “wait for death”.
This is a huge moment in the Tuchel era, the beginning of one last chance to be defined by anything other than a pathetic 30 minutes in Atlanta.
Forget the wave of withdrawals this week. The team needs psychological rejuvenation, not fresh blood. Only a tactical shift can wipe the slate clean, only a commanding and fearless performance can begin to repair relations between Tuchel and the fan base.
Anything less will confirm he simply does not understand the requirements of the England job and should not be in his post.
What England need is someone who, through sheer force of will, can overcome decades of national self-loathing.
It’s a big ask. Maybe, yes, an Impossible one. Certainly it requires a deftness, a depth of understanding, that has so far eluded Tuchel.
On Saturday he needs to show that he can make the big calls boldly, that he can overcome the burden, that he can rewrite the DNA.
In short, that he can lead.
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