Thomas Tuchel - The coach who can bring it home - The Full Breakdown
I have confidence in Thomas Tuchel as England manager, and in this extended newsletter, I break down exactly why.
Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Harry Kane, Cole Palmer, Declan Rice. These names are the names of Champions League level players. They all play for the England National Team, and they all deserve to be coached by a world-class Champions League winning manager. England now have a manger who fits this description. His name is Thomas Tuchel.
Welcome back to Football Latest. Today, in our extended monthly newsletter, we discuss the appointment of Thomas Tuchel to the job of England manager. Today, we dive deep into his extensive managerial experience, formations that he could use, and if he is likely to bring a trophy home to England. Let's begin.
England’s appointment of Thomas Tuchel is a massive decision. Tuchel is an experienced and proven manager at the highest level, who is highly regarded by the players that he has coached and highly regarded by other managers. For example, Jurgen Klopp regards him as “exceptional” and Pep Guardiola says that Tuchel is one of the few other mangers that he actually learns and improves from. Setting this high praise aside, there are a couple of important things we need to remember about Tuchel:
He is highly experienced in knockout competitions.
Tuchel has been massively successful in bringing home silverware for the teams that he has managed, including a German Cup in his time with Dortmund, and six trophies in his time with PSG, including a domestic quadruple. As much as his time with PSG was impressive, he still needed to prove himself in a more competitive league than Ligue 1, where PSG are on a higher level when it comes to spending capability than any other team.
After Tuchel left PSG for Chelsea mid-way through the 20/21 season, he still had not won the biggest club trophy of all: the Champions League. After beating both Atletico and Real Madrid in the knockouts, he then went on to beat Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in the final, who were one of the favorites to win the competition. If anything qualifies him to manage a top team in massive international competitions, then it is managing a top team to winning the best club competition.
Additionally, Tuchel is a versatile tactician.
Thomas Tuchel is a manager who does not play in one specific way, or with one specific style. He molds his tactics around the team that he has in front of him, which gives him exceptional potential for international management, where you have little choice about player profiles in certain positions. At Dortmund - where he won the DFB Pokal and rescued a failing Dortmund team from a very poor league finish in the season prior - Tuchel opted for a 4-3-3 formation. Upon moving to PSG, where he won six trophies in 2 years and made the Champions League final, he used a 4-2-2-2 formation. Next, on his move to Chelsea, he won the Champions League with a 3-4-2-1 (the formation that Xabi Alonso also used in his unbeaten league campaign season). The graphic below perfectly illustrates how tactically diverse Tuchel has been throughout his career.
Furthermore, Thomas Tuchel is not a “boring manager.”
Some people have claimed that Thomas Tuchel has this boring and defensive style of play, but I don’t think that this is the case. It probably comes from his use of 5 defenders at Chelsea, but this wasn’t a defensive formation, as Reece James and Ben Chilwell (the left and right back) both operated as very attacking wingbacks, making this formation more of a back 3. Tuchel can operate with a back 3 or 4 with his teams depending on the players at his disposal.
Finally, Tuchel is a unifying manager.
What makes Thomas Tuchel a truly exciting prospect for England isn't just his tactical brilliance or trophy-filled resume, it's also his ability to promote unity and inspire belief with his teams when dealing with massive pressure and massive egos. England is a team filled with world-class talent, which comes with massive egos, and Tuchel has had to manage these egos at the massive clubs that he has managed, like having to deal with Neymar at PSG, who actually performed well under Tuchel at the club, and having to deal with a multitude of players in his time at Chelsea who had big ambition and ego. This ego can sometimes cause teams to lack cohesion and not function together as a group (like with generations of England teams), but Tuchel massively avoided this, creating an extremely fluid and exciting Chelsea team, and a PSG team that (again) won six trophies in 2 years.
As aforementioned, England have masses of world class talent at their disposal, but international tournaments demand more than just skill on the pitch. They require a manager who can mold a squad into a cohesive unit, capable of thriving under the weight of national expectations - for which there are lots of for England. Tuchel has proven time and again that he can encourage players to rise above individual brilliance and work toward collective glory. The years of Scholes, Lampard and Gerrard could have used a manager capable of this.
At Chelsea, he walked into a dressing room that had just lost their manager mid-season and was most likely quite divided and demotivated, but despite this, he built a Champions League-winning team in mere months. At PSG, he managed some of the biggest personalities in world football, guiding them to their first-ever Champions League final. These experiences underline a key quality: Tuchel’s ability to manage egos and establish a winning culture, two things that are no more essential at any job than England manager.
Knowing this, how would Tuchel set up England?
The second half of this newsletter is for paid subscribers only, and you do not want to miss the next section. We discuss exactly how England should (and probably will) set up under Tuchel, and explain which players will be key. Upgrade your subscription if you are already subscribed for free using the button below: