Sloppy England give Thomas Tuchel food for thought on road to World Cup

England's coach Thomas Tuchel shouts during the 2026 World Cup qualifiers between Andorra and England on June 7. PHOTO: AFP

UPDATED Jun 09, 2025, 02:21 PM

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LONDON – Thomas Tuchel will put England’s flops to the test in their home friendly against Senegal on June 10 after admitting their sloppy 1-0 win over Andorra underlined how much they need to improve ahead of the 2026 World Cup.

Tuchel’s side were booed in their World Cup qualifier in Barcelona on June 7 after failing to impress against a team ranked 173rd in the world.

Harry Kane’s 50th-minute goal extended Tuchel’s winning start to three games. But, after underwhelming victories over Albania and Latvia in March, the Euro 2024 runners-up were well below their best in a dismal display that left Tuchel bemoaning his players’ lacklustre attitude.

“The last half-an-hour I don’t like it at all because I think we lacked everything that is needed in a World Cup qualifier. There’s lots to get better. At the moment everything is a learning period so we’re smarter than before. We will talk about it honestly and directly and try to do it better,” Tuchel said.

Senegal sit 19th in the world rankings and will pose the toughest test for the 51-year-old German since he took charge at the start of 2025.

With only a small number of international breaks left before the expanded 48-team World Cup, Tuchel won’t go easy on his players, even though they looked fatigued after a gruelling domestic campaign.

“I don’t forget because there’s not so many matches,” he said.

“It’s necessary that we have a good look at it and then present in detail to the players what we don’t like, and to present it in a video session what we have to do better and what are the standards and what we did good.”

Kane has scored in all three matches under Tuchel, his former manager at Bayern Munich, with his latest effort extending the striker’s England record tally to 72.

But the England captain took little pleasure from his latest goal and echoed Tuchel’s belief that the Andorra game should be used as a lesson.

“It’s down to us now to go analyse it, look back and try and learn from it because condition-wise it’s going to be very similar to next summer – dry pitch, warm weather, humid,” he said.

“We were just lacking quality, looked a bit fatigued both physically and mentally and, yeah, we got away with it because we’re a good team and they had a couple of half-chances there where we didn’t get punished. But, ultimately, it wasn’t good enough.”

Tuchel wants the Three Lions to play with a more dynamic approach that mirrors the swashbuckling style used by many English Premier League teams. But he knows it will be hard to implement his tactics with so few opportunities to work with the players.

“Absolutely. It’s our second camp. We can do much better, all of us, and that includes me,” he said.

“It always takes two to tango, but we need to do better at breaking down deep opponents. We played now three times against a 5-4-1, but there are no excuses.

“The lack of counter-pressing and the lack of ball wins and the lack of being aggressive in duels is basic in football. If you don’t show this, then it becomes more or less a game that we saw, which is not attractive, which does not have the quality that we want to show.” AFP

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