Let’s stop doubting Thomas Tuchel: England are impressive and Euro 2028 is the target

Thomas Tuchel celebrates after England’s 7-0 Nations League win over Croatia in Rijeka on Saturday. Photograph: Paul Childs/Action Images/ReutersView image in fullscreenThomas Tuchel celebrates after England’s 7-0 Nations League win over Croatia in Rijeka on Saturday. Photograph: Paul Childs/Action Images/ReutersLet’s stop doubting Thomas Tuchel: England are impressive and Euro 2028 is the targetBarney Ronay in RijekaComing third in the World Cup was really not a disaster, and Saturday’s rout of Croatia and building the team around Jude Bellingham are good signs

Move fast and fix things. It has been a fine week so far for Thomas Tuchel as he attempts the cyclical task of soldering together not just an England team, but a way of looking like one, all the while being battered by the to-and-fro conflicting winds of England managerdom.

There is nothing new here. This is a job that involves not just picking the right players and making high-stakes calculations over your second-half substitutions, but carrying out these basic duties while wrestling with aggrieved members of the Thuggee cult on a collapsing rope bridge outside the Temple of Doom, and simultaneously having your heart ripped out.

No other nation makes quite the same twin-track demands. Manage the games. Yeah, do that obviously. But also tell us who we are and how we should play. This is why the job will always take its pound of mince meat, why these people end up drained and hollowed out, an empty tracksuit resigning in the Wembley toilets, Roy Hodgson in Nice looking like a desiccated vampire, saying “I don’t know why I’m here”.

Read moreIt is also why it was heartening in Rijeka to see Tuchel gripped with the familiar energies, still whirling about on the touchline in penitent black shoes and black trousers, looking as ever like a famine-ridden earl out taking the hounds for a walk, while simultaneously cracking the Enigma code in his hunting shed.

It feels absurd to say that Tuchel is now safe in the job, if only because the idea he wouldn’t be is so hysterical. Tuchel was never realistically in any trouble. But such is the nature of a role where you’re only ever a few rapid-fire defeats away from the incredible twin feat of a greatest-ever overseas World Cup and a near-instant heaving from the job.

We should of course keep a sense of scale over a couple of Nations League wins against underpowered opponents. The 7-0 steamrollering of Croatia was always a strange affair. From the moment the doors opened the whole occasion felt like a youth club association sports day, where everyone gets a medal at the end and the teachers do a disco dance routine.

It was an atmosphere that seemed to communicate itself to the Croatia players even as they were warming up in a notably fun and jokey way, cheered by shrill groups of junior ultras, and blasted by the Croatian version of We Didn’t Start the Fire through the ear-shredding speaker system.

Croatia played from the first minute like a team recovering from a dose of herbal sleeping tablets. Luka Modric’s every touch was met with the kind of noise more usually associated with an appearance by a Korean boyband at an Apple Store launch event, but one of the great players of the age was simply run over by England’s youthful and hungry midfield.

View image in fullscreenJude Bellingham was superb in the win over Croatia, as he was during the World Cup. Photograph: Igor Soban/Pixsell/MB Media/Getty ImagesThese are also the teams you play, however. Croatia were decent enough at the World Cup. Mainly, though this came at an absolutely vital moment in the age of Tuchelism. The next 20 months are basically it, the engine room, the space where Tuchel gets to decide how good his team can be, leading in to a tournament England will never have a better chance of winning.

The only questions that really matter right now are: is there vision of a team and a way to play? And do we have forward progress? The answers to both of which are yes.

England were good in an interesting way in Croatia. We’re used to England teams that seem powerful but also flawed. In Rijeka they looked like a World Cup semi-finalist that has used that experience to improve, strong in every area, physically, technically and in its basic balance.

At times in the current era England have brought to mind the Gareth Southgate team of 2019 into 2020, when some key new players entered a blooming environment, and suddenly they were blowing away mid-range opponents. The Covid break would complicate that arc. An unprovable counter-factual: nudge those first Southgate Euros forward a year and England might have had the momentum to overpower Italy in the final.

There are two aspects to Tuchel’s England this time around. First, the reckoning up with the mistakes of the recent past. Why, oh why didn’t he take Cole Palmer? Well, maybe for the same reason Palmer’s not here now. Well, why of why, then, didn’t he take Phil Foden? This has also answered itself. The same goes for not selecting the back-up striker who is now, it turns out, playing in Saudi Arabia. It is entirely legitimate to still disagree with all these things. But it feels clearer that there was logic and reasoning here.

The past can re-litigate itself. The second key element is the sense of progress. This was always likely to be the case. It takes time to get to know your players. Tuchel had never been to an international tournament before. He was never the knockout specialist some seemed to assume. Just take a look at his record. He’s a process guy. And we are now right in the middle of that process.

View image in fullscreenLewis Hall has enjoyed a fine international break and looks to be first choice for England at left-back. Photograph: Darko Bandić/APSo what has changed? Most obviously making Jude Bellingham the hub of this team is an excellent idea, and not just because of his astonishing talent. Rallying around Bellingham is Tuchel’s version of Southgate’s inflatable unicorns, the talk about Spitfires, the away-days with the SAS crawling through an assault course made entirely from Cheddar cheese and Eccles cakes.

How do you make players want to play for England? Here’s a short cut. Give them aura, brand power, magnetism. Put the big guy right at the centre. Everyone’s turning up if Jude is loving it, and you have a chance for two weeks to exist in his forcefield.

Then there’s the way England have played. There is always talk about “a Premier League style”, which has never been a single thing. But these players are definitely best suited to high-intensity, hard-running, duel-winning football. This wasn’t only there in successfully outmuscling an ageing Mateo Kovacic, who even in his pomp had the air of a frail Victorian child masquerading as an elite modern midfielder, shorts hiked up, skinny legs gamely covering the turf.

England also played like this for half an hour against the world champions, and narrowly lost a game where they went 1-0 down after a minute and missed a late penalty. This felt like an evolved version of the “packet-ball” intensity that blew Croatia away at the World Cup for 20 minutes then could never quite click into gear again. The next Euros are in England. Cancel the heatwave, and they can play like this for longer.

Then there is the issue of balance. Lewis Hall: yes, a proper left-back with a left foot. Jarell Quansah makes lots of sense now, offering something of the Kyle Walker-style recovery athleticism. Alex Scott looked really good in Rijeka, a genuinely smart, head-up, surging midfield presence.

Tuchel is right. He can’t roll into a tournament with two first-choice midfielders. Scott offered something different in the exact area England lose these high-stakes, high-intensity games. He even knows who his back-up centre-forward is now, and it is of course Jude. Ask any question right now. The answer is likely to be the same.

Read moreHere is another unprovable counter-factual. England would have beaten that Argentina team in Atlanta with this team in Rijeka. This should not be a source of why-oh-why frustration. It’s forward momentum, learning new patterns, adding new tricks. Stick Bellingham up front in the second half, pack Scott into a three-man midfield, and they’ve got a far better chance of seeing that game out.

The process is also far from done. England need competition on the right wing. Bukayo Saka is an excellent footballer. But he’s not a weapon other teams will fear. Add an England-issue Michael Olise, for example, and this team looks entirely different in its threat levels. Max Dowman is still just a very nice idea at this point. But there’s time. And he doesn’t need to be perfect.

Finally, and back to the key figure in this cycle, there is the total weaponising of Bellingham, whose role in the team is now beautifully clarified. Station him in forward areas and he will still press and harry and add a defensive function. But turning, running, breaking in transitions, making risky creative passes, he is just a supreme footballer. Not to mention a one-man mission statement of the way this team wants to play.

Tournaments aren’t won with a 7-0 win on the Adriatic coast in front of 6,000 over-caffeinated schoolchildren. But there is progress here. And that time will pass in a wink.