There have been some big feelings in recent days, feelings of consternation, even outrage, at England’s two Wembley performances. Change the players. Sack the manager. Delete England as a sporting entity. If Harry Kane isn’t fit, do they even bother going through the motions of drawing 1-1 with Croatia and muddling past Ghana, only to be knocked out in the last-16 by the first good team they run into?
At which point, perhaps it is worth taking stock for a moment. It is unlikely any of Thomas Tuchel’s starters against Uruguay will play a significant role at the World Cup. The line-up to face Japan was stronger but only a handful of those will start in North America. Six key players were missing. The football was drab and uninspiring, but none of this was entirely representative of who England will be in the summer.
The stark reality is that for several of England’s leading lights, this international break was just that, a break, from the rigours of club football which are more gruelling than ever. Tuchel called up 35 players, and almost an entire XI pulled out with injury.
“I see fatigue, clearly,” the England manager said after Tuesday’s 1-0 defeat by Japan, referring to the players on the pitch and the wider squad. “This is not an excuse but just an explanation.”
In that sense, perhaps this international window did serve a purpose. About a dozen players went on holiday. Another batch took their first two-week break all season in order to give niggling injuries a chance. This was a rare and much-needed window to heal.
Declan Rice could have played, Tuchel suggested, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Jude Bellingham was the same. “[Rice] feels a discomfort since quite a while,” the manager explained. “He’s been playing through it [for Arsenal] and he’s just now on the edge where he thinks, ‘Does this make sense, what I’m doing here, to push through with 70 per cent and push myself and push myself?’”
Perhaps the dropouts did a disservice to representing England, to wearing the shirt, to putting on a show for 80,000 ticket holders at Wembley. But it points to the truth about where international friendlies are, in March, among the priorities for overworked players in title races and with Champions League quarter-finals afoot.
These results won’t dictate the future. England have disappointed in March before, only to come good in the summer. They lost to Brazil and drew with Belgium in 2024 before reaching the European Championship final. Even last year under Tuchel, England bounced back from a dispiriting defeat by Senegal in June with a perfect set of wins through September, October and November.
Tuchel defended his players and took responsibility for the poor displays. But he insisted his belief in achieving the bold goal he set for himself when he took the England job – “to put a second star on the shirt” – remains intact.
“We will not start doubting now. I knew before how complicated this camp can be because I know the level of fatigue that the players are in and the level of minutes that they’ve played.
“We tried to build a football team in three days against Uruguay,” Tuchel laughed. “And it did not look so bad even if it was for you guys and for the fans not the nicest watch. But I’m not so sure that you can play spectacular football against Uruguay or spectacular football against Japan, non-stop. Because it’s difficult. They are just good football teams.
“We also gave [key] players a break so that they come fresh [for Japan] and we can play, maybe, with actually the strongest squad. But it was absolutely not possible because we lost so many players throughout the camp.
“We will not let go of our dream, not let go of the question ‘Why not?’. Now the most important thing is that the players reintegrate with their clubs, have a good end to the season, and then we have them in pre-camp [for the World Cup] and prepare them properly.”
England will convene earlier than most teams in North America when they get together for the camp in Florida, which will feature warm-up games against New Zealand and Costa Rica.
“They will get a week off, the guys who are not involved in the Champions League final, and then we will go very early to the US to prepare us for the heat and the humidity,” Tuchel explained. “We will have an early camp that allows us a good mix between free time and also family-friends time, and football, to arrive with excitement when the tournament starts.
“The season is a long, long season this year for the players, because some of them come from the Club World Cup, and it will not end in May. It will end, hopefully, in the middle of July.”
A perfect qualifying campaign has already been largely forgotten and these friendlies will soon be too. Perhaps Tuchel’s job this past week was simply to help his players survive until June, about recovery more than results. The task of building a coherent football team can wait. Shape and balance and relationships can be perfected in what will be a long summer. Fine-tuning a winning team can take a couple of games, as Argentina showed in 2022 when they lost their opening game to Saudi Arabia.
Fifteen months into the Tuchel project, his real task is only just beginning.
