New England manager Thomas Tuchel has revealed his desire to create both a style of play and a winning culture that forgets about the past when he begins work in January.
Tuchel has been appointed Gareth Southgate’s permanent successor on an initial 18-month contract up to the end of the 2026 World Cup, tasked with delivering England’s first senior international trophy in men’s football in what will by then be 60 long years.
England reached European Championship finals under Southgate in 2021 and 2024, falling agonisingly short of victory each time, but the nation’s tournament record prior to his accession in 2016 had been mixed at best and ultimately quite poor for several decades.
In contrast, England Women won the European Championship in 2022, as well as reaching the World Cup final a year later, while men’s Under-17 and Under-20 World Cup titles were won in 2017, plus a men’s Under-21 European Championship just last year.
Asked by BBC Sport if he believes the claim that being England senior men’s manager is the ‘impossible job’ in football, Tuchel offered his plan to break the cycle of underachievement.
“Nothing is impossible in sport, first of all,” he said. “The [FA] is there, the women did it, the Under-21s did it, so there is no reason [we can’t win]. I think at some point we have to free ourselves from history. We have to focus on the process and this will start from January.
“Then, we need to find guidelines, we need to find principles, maybe also from club football, to which me, the staff, the players, can live up [to] whenever we need. From there, hopefully create a style of play, but also an atmosphere that pushes us the extra percentage that is needed. Then, of course, we need a bit of luck, we need to qualify [for the World Cup], but we believe we can do it.”
Southgate was England‘s most successful men’s team boss in a generation, yet was still lambasted throughout Euro 2024, even though his team reached the final, and then for not winning it.
Tuchel, who has already received a backlash before a ball has even been kicked because of his nationality – with some of the criticism focusing on dismay at the lack of a home-grown appointment and other sections of it just openly xenophobic, said he feels protected from the inevitable scrutiny because he trusts both his own coaching abilities and the FA.
“I have to prove myself ready,” he explained. “I don’t want to prepare myself [for scrutiny] because we all don’t know what is coming.
“First of all, I trust myself as a football coach and I trust myself because I have had very good talks with the federation, which was the most important, so I feel protected from that side.
“I think we both know what we have with each other. I know very well what they demand from me, I think I can deliver exactly that, and the first things is to win the staff over, win the players over, then hopefully the supporters, and the media will follow.”
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