“We tried to build a football team in three days against Uruguay,” Thomas Tuchel says, unable to stop laughing at the end of the sentence. Ridiculous, the England head coach wants to add, although he stops short of that. But incredulity is the theme as he rows back over the past international camp, when best-laid plans fell apart and he came to feel boxed in by circumstances beyond his control.
This is the way Tuchel wants to frame it, the way he tends to want to frame it when things go wrong. Which is certainly what happened in the 1-1 draw against Uruguay at Wembley last Friday and the 1-0 defeat by Japan on Tuesday, also at the national stadium. It is preferable to the alternative reading. That Tuchel’s approach to a difficult window was flawed, inviting trouble. That the breeze through World Cup qualification has not properly prepared him and the squad for the tougher opponents – say, those ranked in Fifa’s top 20. That he cannot find the answer to the greatest threat to England’s hopes – player fatigue.
