Thomas Tuchel loves to talk tactics with an obsessive attention to detail, taking in the tiny tweaks, the dizzying range of possibilities. The England head coach started with a 4-2-3-1 system in his first game against Albania on Friday, playing Curtis Jones alongside Declan Rice in midfield, partly because he was conscious of the threat of the opposing No 8s. He did not want Rice to be outnumbered against the ball.
Tuchel, who is looking ahead to the meeting with Latvia on Monday night, thinks it would be possible for his England to play a 4-1-4-1 with “five very offensive players and more or less Dec as a holding midfielder”, although he wonders whether this would provide enough control in midfield. Would it be too open? He mentioned using a “3-2, with three No 10s and two No 6s” – in other words, a different version of 4‑2‑3‑1, allowing him to make the most of his high-quality playmaker options. That would offer more control but it would mean, as he put it, that “real wingers like Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka, key players, would suffer because the position would not be there”.
Tuchel talked of “half tens” or players that operate in the space between the wing and the No 10 role, naming Morgan Rogers and Cole Palmer, who is not in the squad because of injury, as examples. Rogers, he said, was “very impressive”. The Aston Villa player hopes to start against Latvia.
It was interesting to see how Tuchel pushed his left-back, Myles Lewis-Skelly, high up the pitch when England had possession in the second half against Albania. He said they were playing “in the 3-1” – Rice in front of a back three and Jones also moving further forward – rather than “the 4-1”. The result was that they looked a little vulnerable.
“Sometimes I think about if it would be the right thing to play in a very traditional 4-4-2 as an English national team,” Tuchel said. “This is how I think about English football. A lot of crosses. Crosses from half-field. Two strikers on the pitch.”
There is much for Tuchel to ponder and not much time for him to practise it. The Football Association once had a clock that counted down the days to the World Cup. Tuchel’s measurement is training sessions, telling his squad last Monday there were only 24 of them until the finals next year.
One thing, however, seems to be set in stone: zero room for flexibility. It has been an impossible-to-ignore feature of Tuchel’s first camp and it talks to his other major preoccupation – the spirit in the group, how he needs his players to interact. Put simply, he wants them to demand the very highest standards of each other and never be afraid of calling anyone out if they drop, regardless of age or rank.
“We are all so comfortable with each other off the pitch,” Rice said. “But sometimes on the pitch it’s different. Sometimes you feel like you maybe can’t say something or that you can but only to certain people.
“Thomas has been really good on all 11 players being ruthless with each other, saying what you want to help each other out and push each other.
“It’s just when it’s time to have uncomfortable conversations if it’s not going well; that we can feel open and honest to do that. Where we can improve as a group is being uncomfortable with each other. That’s the next step we can take in terms of getting over the line.”
Tuchel transmits a particular alpha energy; beneath his humour there is an obvious edge. He is happy to take constructive criticism of his players into the public domain, as he did with Phil Foden and Rashford after the Albania game. He felt the wingers were too safe, passing rather than dribbling; failing to make it happen.
“I think you need that, you can’t be comfortable,” Rice said. “This is top-level international football. For me [if that happened], you’d think … ‘all right’. But also it would spur me on to want to do even better. Working with the manager this week, he isn’t going to take any nonsense. He knows he’s here to win the World Cup and to do that you need to push everyone, you need to be uncomfortable.”
Tuchel considered his criticism of Foden and Rashford to be mild and matter-of-fact. It would not or should not have come as a surprise to them, mainly because he had already said it to their faces in the dressing room.
“I just give my analysis of the team,” Tuchel said.
“Sometimes I am surprised with what people try to make out of it, that Phil and Marcus should be offended with what I said. I don’t see it.
“In a football team, in a video meeting or a debrief of a match, everyone has to endure the moment where he sees himself out of position and the coach says: ‘Listen, this is not what I want from you.’ This is always respectful. But we cannot do all the criticism just in an isolated room because sometimes everyone [in the squad] needs to know the information and everyone also needs to understand the guy can handle it. Players are quite demanding and I just encourage them to be that way – in a respectful way.”
It is plain that Tuchel wants a team of leaders, not merely one in the captain, Harry Kane. He mentioned how Rice and Jude Bellingham led in their own ways while Jordan Henderson “did it for the majority of his career”. He also namechecked Marc Guéhi and Saka in this area.
“It comes down to defining their role and making it clear to the players what you expect, how you see them,” Tuchel said. “It’s that they are not jealous of each other, they hear it in front of each other and they know it is on their shoulders.”
