England job exposes every man who takes it – is Thomas Tuchel ready?

To understand the weird and capricious life of the national team, the former Chelsea coach must be prepared to totally immerse himself in it

Oh, Thomas. Is this truly the job that you want? Or is it just the best currently on offer? The life of the super-coach is a lucrative pursuit, and one imagines that both the benefits and the jeopardy can feel much the same in the heated dugout seat at the Parc des Princes, or Stamford Bridge, or the Allianz Arena. Unfortunately, the England manager job is different again.
Let us leave aside the fundamental problem of a non-English England manager – a notion that undermines the whole principle of what makes the international game so different. The English Football Association should never have gone down this path in the first place. That is not Thomas Tuchel’s fault. An urbane, perceptive man, he has simply been offered the job by the FA. The other issue is that managing England is never what many think it to be. Especially for the two non-English incumbents in the role who came before.
The England manager’s job is rather like the distillation of the FA’s problem in one individual: most of the responsibility, and only a fraction of the power the public perceives it to have. That, naturally, belongs with the clubs – as Tuchel knows, having railed against the demands of international football himself in the past. “Too many matches, too many friendly matches, too many matches in general,” Tuchel said as Paris St-Germain manager in October 2019 when Neymar and Idrissa Gueye were both injured playing for their countries.
“We had the African Cup of Nations, we had the Under-21s international tournaments, Copa America and next year again the Copa America,” he said then. “It’s every year now. We have the Euros coming up. It never ends. For me it’s too much. Too many games for the same players who are always involved in these games.”
There is, of course, no comeback for any club manager who says this sort of thing. It is a free hit. But national team managers, and England managers in particular, are discouraged from any criticism of the clubs. The clubs are to be cajoled politely. The England manager is expected to try to keep everyone happy. But even that is not the most complicated part of the job.
The appointment of Tuchel suggests that the FA’s two chiefs, the technical director John McDermott and chief executive Mark Bullingham, feel under such pressure to win that they would ignore the first principle of international sport. Of course, in all but a tiny fraction of roles in British life, nationality would be immaterial. But it is literally the whole point of international football.
The England job exposes the shortcomings of every man who takes it, and not just Sven-Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, the only previous non-English coaches. Eriksson arrived as something of an ingénue. Despite two decades in coaching, he was woefully underprepared for the scrutiny of the job, the power of the players, and the politics. That was before he fell victim to an FA office romance of epic complexity and finally the “Fake Sheikh”.
By the end, with his captain and superstar David Beckham running the show, Eriksson felt more like the players’ non-playing friend. A likeable aide-de-camp.
Capello tried to go the other way and misread completely what passes for the culture of the English footballer. He imposed the kind of joyless regime that was already outdated by 2007, he spoke barely intelligible English, and he did not seem to care. He took only a passing interest in the players and the bigger picture of the English game.
Tuchel is a shrewder candidate than both. But this job is different: to understand the weird life of the England national team, one really has to be prepared to immerse one’s self in it. Is Tuchel ready for the drudgery of coaxing the best from that strange capricious creature that is the England team?
Gareth Southgate, the most successful England manager since Sir Alf Ramsey, worked in different roles for the FA for years. Head of elite development, campaigner for small-sided games for children, England DNA document, St George’s Park coaching hub, Under-21s manager. It was a long and very specific apprenticeship. He turned up on camps for many of the junior teams. He sat through presentations from fellow England coaches on what worked and what did not. He was prepared to put in the hours.
Southgate had, by the end, seen it all with England and the FA, as a player, coach and developer. He understood the nature of the beast. He got very close to a trophy and in the end most wanted him out regardless.
The notion that it just needs a tactical genius to get England over the last hurdle – or the risible brigade of handbrake-off enthusiasts – ignores all the other parts of life inside the England bubble, and how quickly it can go wrong. One only needs to look at the Greece debacle this month to see how fine the line is for even this talented generation of England players.
One would assume Tuchel knows all this. But is he prepared to learn again? He is a big European coach, with a Champions League to his name and a veteran of the internal politics of some big clubs. The England team works differently again. It is a fragile, unpredictable consensus between the FA, clubs, players and fans. When it collapses it tends to do so spectacularly.
It obliges the manager to play statesman and patient teacher. To know the landscape of the country’s football politics, to build relationships with players one barely sees 30 days a year. To explain to them afresh why they are putting themselves through the inconvenience of it all, and to understand why it is important. Tuchel is no doubt an excellent coach. His substitutions may well prove more popular than those made by Southgate. But is he ready for this?