Thomas Tuchel wants to forget about the recent past. Argentina in the semi-finals of the World Cup just over two months ago? Our best chance to get to the final for 60 years?
Let’s move on, eh? In fact, let’s have a bit of a laugh about it. Tactics? Nobody wants to talk about tactics, Tuchel says.
Only the pesky press want to talk about tactics, Tuchel says, as if that is something the media should be ashamed of. Heaven forfend that some England fans still feel bitter about why the dream died. The real people, Tuchel says, just want to remember Mexico and the glory of the Azteca.
I want to remember Mexico, too. I’ll never forget it. It was one of the greatest football occasions I’ve ever witnessed. I’ll always be grateful to Tuchel for the fact he masterminded that beautiful victory. It was one of England’s greatest performances at a tournament. It was also a last-16 game.
Unfortunately, I’ll never forget the Argentina tie, either. I’ll never forget the missed opportunity. Tuchel and the FA might want to move on to the Nations League campaign stretching ahead of us over the next few weeks and the tie against Spain at Wembley on Saturday but I can’t do it. Not yet.
Tuchel seems flatly unable to accept that he got anything wrong against Argentina. He and those around him are trying to style it out. It’s not him, it’s us. And by ‘us’, I mean English football. We are petty for still dissecting it, apparently.
Thomas Tuchel wants us all to move on from the World Cup semi-final defeat to Argentina. Well, I’m sorry, I can’t do that yet
Tuchel seems flatly unable now and in the immediate aftermath to accept that he got anything wrong in that match
It’s not his fault we blew it against Argentina, he is saying. The fault is in ourselves that we are underlings, he continues to tell us. It’s in our DNA, you see. There’s really absolutely nothing he can do about it.
There is some elite-level gaslighting going on here. Most of us can see through it so let’s be honest about what happened in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on July 15: Tuchel faced his first big test as England manager and he blew it. He blew it spectacularly.
He was not hired to get us to the World Cup semi-finals. Gareth Southgate did that. Tuchel was hired to get us beyond the semi-finals. He was hired to coach a talented group of England players to win the World Cup. He was hired, famously, because he would have the ability to get us ‘over the line’.
But when the test came, he wasn’t up to it. That’s the truth. I’ve heard all his excuses and all his deflections. But when the test came, he blew a 1-0 lead against an ordinary Argentina side. He was comprehensively out-coached by Argentina’s Lionel Scaloni. When the heat was on, Tuchel folded.
England always find a way to lose the big games at World Cups and lo and behold we had done it again. Tuchel was being paid the big bucks to fix that glitch in our psyche but he couldn’t do it. When it mattered most, England froze. And he froze with them.
In a weird way, I admire his front. There is something awfully bold about blaming his players and saying there was nothing he could do about their inability to keep the ball. ‘I should be coaching them to keep the ball?’ Tuchel asked on Friday, as if it were an utterly alien idea. ‘That’s my job? I’m not sure that I have the time.’
That’s why many England fans are finding it hard to let the mistakes of the Argentina game go. Because if Tuchel can’t accept that mistakes were made, then how can England move forward? How can we have any confidence at all that the next time we face a critical match, Tuchel does not blow it again?
If I were one of his players, I’d still be thinking about what he said in the aftermath of that Argentina tie. I’d still be thinking about the way he ducked responsibility. I’d still be thinking about what he said about English players and their DNA.
Enzo Fernandez celebrates his goal against England in the World Cup semi-finals
If I were one of Tuchel’s players, I’d still be thinking about what he said in the aftermath of that Argentina tie
Put it this way, it wasn’t a surprise to me when the news came through on Monday morning that Cole Palmer had pulled out of the squad for the games against Spain, Czech Republic and Croatia with a ‘small muscle injury’. A few hours later the FA announced that Kobbie Mainoo, Marcus Rashford, Declan Rice and Tino Livramento would also be absent due to ‘respective injury issues’.
Palmer didn’t make the World Cup squad, of course. Tuchel discarded him. Mainoo went but he didn’t play a single minute in the USA and Mexico. Tuchel humiliated him. Palmer and Mainoo are two of England’s best players. They are brilliant technical athletes. Of all England’s players, they are two of the best at keeping the ball.
Tuchel chose not to use them at the World Cup. He ignored Trent Alexander-Arnold, too, another of England’s best technical players. And now he has the gall to suggest our players are like neanderthals who can’t keep possession. If you want to keep possession in a World Cup semi-final against Argentina, maybe pick players in the squad who are the best at keeping possession.
It is surely not too great a stretch to suggest that Tuchel’s disdain for the ball-retention abilities of England’s players is not conducive to future harmony in the squad as the country turns its eyes towards a home European Championship in the summer of 2028.
If Tuchel could admit the errors he made in Atlanta, if he could take responsibility for the failure against Argentina, then maybe England could move forward with confidence. But he can’t. The delusion of infallibility has been his downfall before. And so doubt remains.
LIGHT SHONE ON UNITED’S ABSURD RECRUITMENT POLICY
Watching Fulham play Manchester United at Craven Cottage on Sunday afternoon, it was hard not to be reminded once more of the absurdity of United’s stated plan of fixing their team section by section in successive summer transfer windows.
The rationale, apparently, is that they fixed the attack in the summer of 2025, they fixed the midfield this summer and they will turn their attention to the defence next summer.
It is, frankly, bizarre. Football doesn’t work like that. Maybe Matheus Cunha, for example, will want out by next summer. Andrey Santos can’t get a kick at the moment. Football teams are like whack-a-mole: problems crop up everywhere.
And in the meantime, the creaking defence is a liability and another season’s hope of winning the Premier League is over already.
Manchester United’s policy of fixing the team section by section is frankly odd. What if Matheus Cunha decides he wants out next summer?
And what of the newly-acquired £50m signing Andrey Santos who cannot get a kick at the moment?
CALLING IT ‘THE DOCKERS’ DERBY’ IS JUST WRONG!
A point of order: a West Ham-supporting friend of mine wishes to advise that the habit of referring to the Championship match between his side and Millwall at the weekend as ‘The Dockers’ Derby’ ground the gears of him and many of his fellow Hammers.
‘West Ham were born from an ironworks yard, not a dockyard,’ he writes. ‘Prior to the advent of people needing to place some corny moniker on every football match, it was never, ever included in the vocabulary of sensible people growing up on the terraces of Upton Park and The Den.’
A fair point, I think. As an adjunct, reports from the aforementioned derby on Saturday, which ended in a 2-2 draw, suggest it was played in a fiercely wonderful atmosphere.
