‘Be ruthless with each other’: Tuchel’s method to get best out of England

Tactics-obsessed head coach wants his players to feel free to criticise anyone not doing their job properly

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”.

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