Thomas Tuchel criticised England’s first half XI – and the pitch – as the Three Lions started their World Cup preparations with a low key victory over New Zealand.
The German appeared less than impressed with an opening 45 minutes which saw Harry Kane score the only goal of the game, and accused his starters of going ‘freestyle’.
‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘Not super happy. In the first half we were out of position and it was a bit too much freestyle.’
When asked what he meant by that, Tuchel suggested his side had gone rogue and ditched the gameplan. ‘We were changing positions for too long,’ he said. ‘It’s not a problem to change positions, but you have to find the position again, so that everyone knows how to start the attack, and then we can just accelerate the game easier.
‘And we were taking crosses, a lot of crosses, long-range shots, which is normally not our style of play. We played a lot of long balls, we played a lot of long passes – that was not part of training in the last four days.’
On Friday, Daily Mail Sport revealed how England were to face a ‘plug and play’ pitch that had only been laid around a week ago at the Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
And Tuchel was far from impressed with the surface, despite his side coming through with no injuries.
‘It was very difficult to play on,’ he said. ‘We have no injuries and there were no concerns, but it was very uneven and to move the ball quickly, when you have the ball for the majority of the match, it doesn’t help you.’
Thomas Tuchel was not pleased with England’s first-half display against New Zealand
When asked if he was surprised he had to deal with that in the first outing, he responded: ‘It is what it is. It can happen, I know it from pre-season tours overseas, that this can happen if you play in stadiums, normally in football stadiums, that the pitch is maybe too new, and not fully grown and not fully even.’
Tuchel started with Morgan Rogers in the side, which prompted some to wonder whether Jude Bellingham may have to be content with a place on the bench when the tournament starts. However, Bellingham was made captain when he arrived for the second half – and Tuchel warned not to read too much into the situation.
‘Decisions are not made yet for Croatia, and there were no hidden messages,’ Tuchel said. ‘We try to have more or less equal teams, and Harry and Morgan played many matches for us together, and we had yesterday a strong group in training with Jude, Nico O’Reilly and Elliot Anderson, and we just kept them together because they enjoyed playing against us yesterday in training. So that was it, no secret messages.’
Tuchel went on to praise the Real Madrid playmaker, who missed two months of the season with a hamstring injury. ‘He comes from an injury and is full of energy, and happy to be back on the pitch,’ he said.
‘He had his break, unfortunately, in a decisive part of the season, Champions League season, and then a national campaign for the championship in Spain, so this was very unfortunate for Real Madrid and for him personally, but you can see now that he is actually in a sweet spot, he comes back, he’s fresh, he wants to play, and he’s in top shape.’
Meanwhile, All Whites coach Darren Bazeley, the former Watford, Wolves and England Under 21 defender, also appeared a tad unimpressed with England’s performance. ‘If they want to win the World Cup they need to be better than they were today,’ he said.
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