In one of his first meetings with his England players in the spring of 2025, Thomas Tuchel stood in a dark room in front of a screen that showed a graphic with Mount Everest at the top. The imaging was clear. This was to be the target. The top of the world.
It was why Tuchel had been hired as a successor to Gareth Southgate. To put the ‘second star on the jersey’ as he put it in his opening press conference. To win the World Cup. Tuchel made sure from his first interactions with his squad that they understood the message.
‘The reason I took this job was you,’ Tuchel said to England’s players that day. ‘The mission is clear. To be world champions. We should speak about that straight away. I want to arrive here at the top with the toughest group in the world, a team that nobody wants to play against.’
Tuchel, born in Bavaria, had wanted to be the head coach of England since observing the excitement that greeted the country’s progress to the final of the Covid-delayed Euros in 2021, when he had just won the Champions League with Chelsea. He spoke to his agent Olaf Meinking about it at the time, only to be told he had ‘the wrong passport’. To this day, he still teases Meinking about proving him wrong.
Tuchel’s vision of what an England team should look like was outlined to the FA when he met technical director John McDermott and chief executive Mark Bullingham in Munich in the autumn of 2024, as they searched for Southgate’s successor.
That idea – of an England team playing with the physicality, speed and precision of a top Premier League side – remains at the core of how Tuchel thinks this World Cup can be won. He has been sure of that from the start and brought that idea to America with him two weeks ago.
Thomas Tuchel made sure from his first interactions with his England squad that they understood the message
Tuchel’s vision of what an England team should look like was outlined to the FA when he met their top bosses in 2024
‘It’s the best league in the world,’ says Tuchel. ‘Why would the national team not embrace the best of it? It’s what our strengths are.’
That messaging may well be tested over the next month here. Only 18 months ago we were asking how an England manager – it was interim Lee Carsley at the time – could possibly get the trio of golden sophisticates Cole Palmer, Phil Foden and Jude Bellingham into the same team. Tuchel has travelled to the States without the first two and Bellingham is not guaranteed to be in his side.
So it has been a sharp volte face from how we had previously been encouraged to view our latest generation of technically proficient, elite academy-produced England players. The mantra has not exactly been back to basics but it has definitely changed. If it goes wrong Tuchel will not be allowed to forget it.
But Tuchel is not really one for self-doubt. Nor does he worry overly about what the outside world says or thinks of him. After he omitted Bellingham from the squad for the 2025 October international fixtures, it was suggested to him that England wouldn’t go far without their best player.
‘Where is your proof?’ he replied, and repeated it for emphasis. England beat Wales 3-0 the next day and Tuchel was back on it in the Wembley tunnel afterwards. ‘Maybe I know what I am doing eh?’ he said with a smile.
Tuchel’s view – and that of his assistant Anthony Barry – has always been that this World Cup, played out in heat up to 40 degrees and across three countries and six weeks, will be one of big moments rather than electric 90-minute performances. The team that impresses them most in the Premier League is Arsenal.
Tuchel spent time in America at last summer’s Club World Cup and was overwhelmed by the severity of the conditions. ‘Have you tried to run at midday in Carolina?’ he asked on his return. ‘It’s impossible’.
So there is a sense of pragmatism running through Tuchel’s England squad. Under Southgate, England dreamed big of matching teams like Spain and France at their own game, and they came close. But Tuchel saw only failure in that – albeit narrow – and decided his team would try to conquer the world a different way.
After he omitted Jude Bellingham from the squad last October, it was suggested to him that England wouldn’t go far without their best player. ‘Where is your proof?’ he replied
Tuchel’s view has always been that this World Cup, played out in heat up to 40 degrees and across six weeks, will be one of big moments rather than electric 90-minute displays
At the heart of it all has been straight forward, uncluttered football and, just as importantly, themes of culture and squad harmony.
While coaching a Paris Saint-Germain team containing players such as Neymar, Angel di Maria and Kylian Mbappe between 2018 and 2020, Tuchel saw how ego and selfishness can undermine a talented group. He refers to his decision to go there as ‘crazy’ and came to the England job determined that a sense of sporting togetherness would prevail.
His treatment of Bellingham has been pivotal to this in that it serves as an example. Much has been said and written about England’s most talented player but the truth is that Tuchel recognised in the Real Madrid star some of the self-regard that so irritated team-mates during Euro 2024. His answer was to show Bellingham that this England team could win without him.
In Tuchel’s mind there are still doubts about Bellingham’s positional discipline and that’s one of the reasons Morgan Rogers has had his nose in front for the No 10 spot. Tuchel simply thinks the Aston Villa man is more reliable and that is informative in terms of how he sees the game.
More widely, Tuchel thinks the message got through early to the rest of the squad. He can be brutally frank and has at times an unusually thin understanding of how deeply some of his public comments can resonate with players. It’s a flaw.
We know of his history with Bellingham. He puts his labelling of some of the 22-year-old’s behaviour as ‘repulsive’ in an infamous talkSPORT interview after a friendly defeat to Senegal a year ago down to a lack of post-match sleep. He apologised.
But that was only the tip of the Tuchel iceberg. He questioned Trent Alexander-Arnold’s defensive ability on the day he walked through the door. He has criticised England fans for not making enough noise. After recalling Harry Maguire to the squad for two friendlies in March, he followed the second by saying the Manchester United player was still some way down the queue for a centre-half berth. Those comments are understood to have irritated the big defender.
However, this is Tuchel. He has proved himself a coach as straightforward and clear as he would like the national team’s football to be, and the truth is that the group of players he has with him here in America are all in. They love him.
Tuchel has proved himself a coach as straightforward and clear as he would like England’s football to be, and the group of players he has with him here in America are all in. They love him
In Tuchel’s mind there are still doubts about Bellingham’s positional discipline and that’s one of the reasons Morgan Rogers (right) has had his nose in front for the No 10 spot
After recalling Harry Maguire (left) to the squad in March, he followed the second by saying the Manchester United player was still some way down the queue for a centre-half berth
When he watched England’s Euro 2024 final defeat to Spain back on TV, he noticed 60 verbal interactions between players in the first half when things were going well. As the game slipped away in the second half, that number slid to 35. That was never going to be allowed to happen again. Not on Tuchel’s watch, not in a world where players like Dan Burn and Jordan Henderson are selected as much for what they bring off the field as on.
Those not able to live with this order of things have already been left behind.
If last summer’s miserable defeat to Senegal at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground was not quite the turning point in Tuchel’s time with England, it wasn’t long in coming.
It was a bad night. The first opponent of real stature faced by Tuchel’s team ran an England lineup featuring the likes of Kyle Walker and Conor Gallagher ragged in winning 3-1. Bellingham ended the night by putting his foot through a bucket of water bottles and threatening to chase the fourth official down the tunnel.
It was a long summer after that but it was in the September – after a dull 2-0 win over Andorra at Villa Park – that Tuchel finally saw the penny drop for a group of players who trained between that game and the one that followed in Serbia three days later like he had not seen them before. According to just about everybody close to this England setup, that was the week that firmly and suddenly laid the founding stones of Tuchel’s England.
Captain Harry Kane – or ‘H’ as Tuchel calls him – has subsequently described it as ‘the best camp since Gareth left’ and the four changes made by Tuchel between the two games contributed to a thumping away win against a team that was expected to be the toughest in qualifying.
Notably, Bellingham was not involved while he recovered from shoulder surgery, and the new jewel in the midfield crown – Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson – made his debut and played both games.
Rogers has said that night in Belgrade was the one when he finally felt like an England player. In the changing room afterwards, Kane was close to tears as he handed a debut England cap to his former Tottenham team-mate, full back Djed Spence.
According to just about everybody close to this England setup, the week leading up to Serbia away last year was the one that firmly and suddenly laid the founding stones of Tuchel’s team
The four changes made by Tuchel contributed to a thumping away win against a team that was expected to be the toughest in qualifying
Captain Harry Kane – or ‘H’ as Tuchel calls him – has subsequently described it as ‘the best camp since Gareth left’
‘That was the penny-drop moment for everybody,’ said a source close to the England camp. ‘There was an understanding of what Thomas wants that emerged during that week – it was a communal buy-in.
‘The atmosphere, the purpose and the intensity of the training all cranked up a couple of levels. Almost out of nowhere, the Declan Rice-Elliot Anderson partnership emerged but just as importantly, Thomas worked out how it was he wanted the team to play.
‘The experimenting was over. He had found his structure. When we went to Serbia for game two to face a team who hadn’t lost at home for two years, he was just convinced we would win. We did.’ Five-nil, in fact.
Tuchel and his assistant Barry are obsessive students of footballing trends, especially in Europe. On occasion, Tuchel has been criticised for not attending enough games in person. He refutes this and the stats are actually on his side. Equally, what won’t be seen are the nights at St George’s Park with Tuchel and his staff sitting in front of banks of TV screens. A different game on each one. ‘They can be long evenings,’ said Barry back in the winter.
Noticing that standards of coaching across Europe are now so high that low defensive blocks are becoming harder and harder to play through, Tuchel and Barry have drilled their team in the value of being able to play directly and of maximising set-piece opportunities.
It apes Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal a little and it may jar with purists. Spain won’t be looking to win a World Cup via near post flick-ons after all. But Tuchel doesn’t pretend to care. Even in defeat to Japan at Wembley in March, England created a flurry of late chances from corners as the Asian side tired. In the heat of an American summer, Tuchel believes England’s strength in this area will be definitive.
Around a lunch table in a London pub last summer, Tuchel sat with writers and drummed home the importance of long throws and set-pieces at this World Cup. A year out and he was convinced of it.
That lunch, with precise details declared off the record, was noticeable for the frankness with which Tuchel discussed individual topics. His assessment of some of the candidates on the fringes – and indeed one or two already in his squad – was unstinting in its clarity.
What won’t be seen are the nights at St George’s Park with Tuchel and his staff sitting in front of banks of TV screens. A different game on each one
Tuchel and Barry have drilled their team in the value of being able to play directly and of maximising set-piece opportunities
Much of the talk again that day was of culture and it’s a theme that individual players return to when they talk of their time under Tuchel.
He may keep Barry up late at night with endless WhatsApp messages but with his players it tends to be phone calls or – if he can – a FaceTime video chat. There is method to that, too. He likes to see how players react to what he says.
There have been times when individual players have been overwhelmed with information. Tuchel has always been aware of the fact he had only 60 ‘contact days’ with his players over the 18 months since he started and that only about 24 of those were on the training pitch.
With that in mind, the feedback came thick and fast early on only for Tuchel to row back once he realised it was too much for some.
He has not travelled to America without regrets. For example, he recognised the sadness in Foden’s football from the outset and backed himself to draw the magic once more from the City player. By his own admission, he failed.
Palmer’s omission saddens him, too. But having said he would not take players to a World Cup just because of who are they, he has been true to his word.
On the whole, Tuchel has worn the strains of the post lightly. In episode one of the FA’s own excellent YouTube series Building the Dream, technical director McDermott says: ‘This job brings pressure and I have seen that all the way back to Graham Taylor.’
He is right. Managers like Kevin Keegan, Glenn Hoddle and Roy Hodgson were never quite the same again after the England experience, while Southgate shows no desire to return to football yet. Some of his recent soundbites have almost hinted at trauma.
The omissions of Phil Foden (left) and Cole Palmer have saddened Tuchel, who admits he failed to get the best out of Foden in particular
Tuchel has always been aware of the fact he had only 60 ‘contact days’ with his players over the 18 months since he started and that only about 24 of those were on the training pitch
On the whole, Tuchel has worn the strains of the post lightly. He and his team now have one aim and one aim only – to win the World Cup
Tuchel is yet to suffer, though there is time. Those who have held reservations about him from the start point to defeats against strong opposition Senegal (world ranking: 16th) and Japan (18th) and with that in mind, his is an England team that does have something to prove against Croatia in Dallas. Zlatko Dalic’s team are ranked 11th, seven below Tuchel’s England.
As Tuchel and Barry have said themselves, the ambition after succeeding Southgate was to ‘take the next step’. If it were to happen, they will trace it back to a conversation they had in their favourite Munich café after their meeting with their new employers.
‘The Coldplay song a Sky Full of Stars came on,’ smiles Barry in an interview on the FA website.
‘We just started to sing. To us it was A Shirt Full of Stars. That’s the aim.’
