Sport
Tuchel’s bold squad choices are paying off
Thomas Tuchel put a target on his back when he named his 26-man squad for the 2026 World Cup as England manager. Trent Alexander-Arnold, Phil Foden and Cole Palmer were left at home as the German coach favoured a different approach. It could have gone very wrong for him this summer.
Instead, England’s World Cup performances have justified Tuchel’s controversial choices. The Three Lions have fought their way to the semi-finals and the players called up by the former Bayern Munich, Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain boss have helped them do that. Tuchel has been vindicated.
This isn’t to say that Tuchel got everything right with his squad selection. England, for instance, could have used a midfielder in the mould of Adam Wharton in the matches against Mexico and Norway to gain a foothold in the centre of the pitch. The Crystal Palace midfielder’s calmness in possession would have been useful.
It could be argued that Harry Maguire might have been a good option to have when England were defending their own box for large periods of the last 16 encounter with Mexico at the Estadio Azteca. Others have also made a case for Alexander-Arnold, Foden and Morgan Gibbs-White in other matches.
Dan Burn and Djed Spence, however, have more than played their part in England’s run to the final four. While Spence suffered a difficult game in the group stage meeting with Ghana, he bounced back to make a very valuable contribution in the edgy victory over Norway. It wasn’t pretty, but the Tottenham Hotspur full back dug deep.
Burn was similarly useful in the Mexico and Norway wins, coming off the bench to clear anything that came into the box. His header late on against the former was particularly valuable, essentially stopping the final attack that had the potential to send the match to a penalty shootout.
“We made life very, very difficult for ourselves today,” said Tuchel after the quarter-final victory over Norway which required Jude Bellingham to produce a Man of the Match performance to secure England’s place in the final four. “The result is fantastic, we’re in the last four. It’s amazing.
“I’m not happy with the performance. In every sense. The commitment is there but we made life very, very difficult for us in the way we played, how we played. Sloppy, tactical mistakes, not fast enough. Not repetitive enough. We were lucky enough. We will get better, we need to get better. Now it’s celebrations. Now it’s taking it all in. We need everything to make a better performance.”
Tuchel is clearly keeping standards high within the England dressing room. The German coach also highlighted the strength of his team’s mentality and praised Bellingham in particular. Tuchel is pushing the Real Madrid midfielder to new heights, even if his methods are sometimes abrasive.
By leaving Gibbs-White and Palmer at home, Tuchel made the bet that Bellingham would be the attacking midfielder England could build around at the World Cup. His relationship with Bellingham hasn’t always been the smoothest, but this summer is yet more proof that Tuchel knows what his players need to perform at their best.
If England are to lift the World Cup for the first time since 1966 this summer, they must continue to have full faith in Tuchel’s methods and ideas. His vision of what the national team should look like has been questioned, sometimes even by his own players, but results are now being delivered.
As a German, Tuchel wasn’t the most obvious appointment as England manager. He also didn’t represent the stylistic shift that many fans wanted after the end of the Sir Gareth Southgate era. Tuchel, however, might have picked exactly the right group of players to achieve his objective.
