Thomas Tuchel has warned that club managers can expect no favours when it comes to rests and team selections as his England side push for World Cup victory, but that all choices will be “responsible”.
The national team are in a strange situation this week, as they face two World Cup qualifiers in the space of 72 hours, which goes against Fifa’s own recommendations. Monday’s match at home to Latvia starts at 7.45pm, less than a full three days after Friday’s 2-0 win over Albania ended.
This intense schedule was put to Tuchel, and whether it might influence his decisions given the period is also when a long club season gets to the business end.
The England manager has been in this situation with Chelsea, after all, but he was not too sympathetic. He pointed to Arsenal’s decision in the Champions League last 16 against PSV Eindhoven as one example.
“Given the fact Declan Rice played after a 7-1…a 7-1 first leg and Declan played the next match with Arsenal,” said Tuchel. “I didn’t have the feeling that they think so much about us so I don’t think we have to break our heads about this.”
Tuchel did then offer more conciliatory context though.
“I take care about the players,” he added. “We take care about the schedule. But it would be the wrong signal to tell players now ‘hey you have tough [club] matches coming up so I rest you now’.
“We have a qualifier to play, we do what’s good for us, we monitor them, we are in contact with the clubs, we are in high-level monitoring where the statuses are known and we won’t take any unprofessional risks. Because first of all I feel responsible for the players. I don’t want the player to be injured, I want the players to play quarter-finals of the Champions League – all of them – because I want to watch it, I want to see it.
“So this is where it is and in the end we take care about us and the clubs take care about themselves and the main focus is taking care of the players.”
England are expected to again play a 4-2-3-1 against Latvia, with Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers coming in for Phil Foden, and Marc Guehi likely to return to defence.
Tuchel insisted that Jude Bellingham and Foden can play together, as he said the latter’s drop-off with England was more down to context and confidence.
“Jude played as a 10 and I think Phil would maybe prefer to play as a 10 and maybe it would suit him even more,” explained Tuchel. “But with Bukayo [Saka] out and the opponent who had a key player on the right, we just made the choice to play with Curtis Jones because there was a lot of work, invisible work to do for Curtis for second balls and to play as a double six against the ball.
“We didn’t want to be naive and go all in with five offensive players and then always have the trouble that we would only have one six and constantly have two strong number 8s left and right of Declan. In the first match, that was the reason. We also have Morgan Rogers who’s very impressive, who’s also like a half-10. We also have Cole Palmer who’s not here, who’s a half-10. In the end, the players have to take what they get.
“I think that Phil can play on the wing, he played on the wing and he can also play as a nine in the middle of the pitch. In general, he’s just missing what these creative players sometimes are missing. Confidence and the flow. He’s trying hard, you see the investment in defensive actions. It’s just not really happening that you could say like ‘wow’. You see it in the clubs, it’s not only here.”
