Despite the frenzy of Thomas Tuchel's England
reception there is cause for hope | Jonathan
Liew
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But what about the pathway? What kind of message
does it send out to all the promising English
coaches out there? What does it say about the
system when the Football Association needs to
import a head coach from abroad? Why won't you
sing the national anthem? Is it hypocritical for
you to wear a poppy when it was your lot who,
you know?

Yes: if the industrial-strength outrage
generated by his appointment is any indication,
Thomas Tuchel's press conference after winning
the 2026 World Cup is certainly going to be
wild. Because of course we must assume that this
outrage is in fact a consistent and principled
intellectual stance that will be maintained
throughout regardless of any victorious
campaign, rather than, say, a bile reflex
confected and amplified largely for clicks and
attention.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves, and in
more ways than one. Not least because there are
few guarantees that Tuchel's and England's
marriage of convenience will even survive the 18
months to the next World Cup. Tuchel wants a
high-profile springboard to his next super-club
job. The FA wants to win, and win now. Neither
party is even really bothering to maintain the
pretence that this is the start of a long and
beautiful friendship.

Meanwhile, the last 24 hours of news cycle are a
reminder that, on some level, every single
England coach is set up to fail. Too
inexperienced. Too battle-scarred. Too
idealistic. Too pragmatic. Too risky. Too safe.
Too weak. Too woke. Too Swedish. Too Italian.
And now we have the surreal sight of a new
England coach who is basically too accomplished,
too garlanded with big international prizes, so
good he makes our own meagre coaching pool look
bad in comparison.

To be fair, this is far from the only objection
that has been registered against Tuchel. Danny
Mills doesn't like the fact that he wears a
hoodie and cap on the touchline. Gary Neville
doesn't believe he fits the "criteria of St
George's Park". Scott Minto is disappointed that
he's not Eddie Howe. Dean Ashton is "a little
bit underwhelmed".

This is not really an argument that can be
pursued on the basis of reason or logic or
facts. You can point at the precedent of Sarina
Wiegman or Trevor Bayliss, or the fact that
France and Italy and Spain and the Netherlands
and Argentina and Portugal have all had foreign
coaches in the past, or the fact that Brazil
spent years trying to pursue Carlo Ancelotti,
that the likes of Greece and South Korea and
Senegal all enjoyed their greatest triumphs
under foreign coaches, and none of these
countries reported feeling any less jubilant or
patriotic as a result.

But none of it will ever really cut through,
because at its core these are issues of emotion
and identity. Not to mention a peculiar and
longstanding English obsession with breeding,
stock, upbringing, the right sort of chap. The
Tuchels from Krumbach? Not familiar with them,
old boy. In a world still defined by fluid
borders and fractured identities, still
negotiating the twisted legacies of war and
empire and mass migration, where it is becoming
harder than ever to define the "we", perhaps it
is little surprise that so many of us take
refuge in the trivial symbolism of obsessing
over one passport, held by one man, doing one
job, once.

And trivial really is the word here, because
there is a legitimate debate to be had over who
owns and runs this country, who gets to declare
themselves a true patriot and who gets demonised
as an outsider. But it is not a debate ever
likely to be entertained in the Daily Mail
(controlled by the non-domiciled Lord
Rothermere) or the Daily Telegraph (owned until
last year by a Bermuda-based investment company)
or the Sun (owned by an American conglomerate),
or any of the other self-styled defenders of our
cherished indigenous institutions.

As for unclogging the coaching pipeline, this is
the work of decades and not years. Liverpool
haven't had an English manager since 2011,
Manchester City since 2007, Manchester United
and Arsenal since 1986. So in the last 13 years,
your sample size for whether an English coach
can take on a big job is basically two: Frank
Lampard and Graham Potter. And if Chelsea had
entertained any realistic expectation of a title
challenge in 2019 or 2022, it's arguable neither
of them would have got their chance either.

What it's going to take to move the dial on
this: serious investment, the dismantling of
networks and entrenched prejudices and
inferiority complexes that have built up over
generations, a big dose of luck. What it's not
going to take: simply handing the England job to
Eddie Howe and hoping for the best.

There is of course an irony here. All this
bluster over whether Tuchel is too German for
the England job rather glosses over the issue of
whether Tuchel is actually going to succeed at
the England job. There seems to be an assumption
that England are getting the Chelsea Tuchel, the
tactical genius who took on an ailing rabble in
January and led them to the Champions League
title in May. Huge if true. But what if England
are actually getting the Tuchel of Bayern
Munich, who hired him in 2023 expecting a
similar result and soon ended up with their
first trophyless season in 12 years?

In a way, Tuchel's challenge at Bayern was more
akin to what awaits him with England than
anything else he has previously faced in his
career. Bayern coaches operate within rigid
constraints: outsized expectations, a
recruitment policy largely beyond their control,
a rolling media circus, a dressing room full of
powerful senior players, an organisation riddled
with leaks and gossip.

In Tuchel's case he encountered another familiar
problem: a dearth of midfielders capable of
executing the controlled, high-energy style he
wanted. Tuchel made no secret of his desire to
replace the club stalwarts Leon Goretzka and
Joshua Kimmich in the summer of 2023, but when
no replacement materialised he was forced to
begin the season with the worst of all worlds: a
restive dressing room, an undermined authority
and a midfield he did not want.

This is a new job, a new situation, a new set of
circumstances. But it's uncanny how many of the
same strictures apply here. You will deliver
exemplary success on a minimal timescale. You
will handle a dressing room of stars, many of
whom were there long before you arrived and will
still be there long after you have left. You
will have Harry Kane, who will score lots of
goals but also can't really run. But you don't
have a world-class midfield, you don't have a
world-class defence, and you can't sign João
Palhinha.

History suggests that when a Tuchel tenure
implodes, it tends to implode in a hurry. His
boardroom relationships have broken down too
often to be coincidental. In a sense this
encapsulates the high-stakes gamble the FA have
taken. Poor results, terrible vibes, personal
differences, tabloid scandal, a lucrative job
offer from somewhere else: there are a million
ways in which this can go wrong.

But sometimes it takes the perspective of an
outsider to unload this country's accumulated
emotional baggage, to separate what matters from
what does not. Tuchel is a high-quality
strategist, a fine communicator, about as
technically gifted a coach as any international
team can realistically hope to employ these
days. There are a million ways this can go
wrong. But it's also possible to glimpse the one
way it can go dazzlingly right.



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