Thomas Tuchel backed Jude Bellingham to one day become permanent England captain after the midfielder ended the Nations League win against Czechia wearing the armband.
Three days on from the helter-skelter 3-2 home defeat to Spain, the World Cup bronze medallists travelled to Prague for a Group A3 encounter that opened up following Pavel Sulc’s first-half sending-off.
Anthony Gordon gave England the lead just after the break and long-standing skipper Harry Kane struck moments before leaving the field and handing the captain’s armband to Bellingham.
The Real Madrid star also ended the Spain game wearing it and Tuchel said after the 2-0 victory at the Fortuna Arena: “I think he was even the captain against Costa Rica before the World Cup. Yeah, it is always a reward and always an honour.”
Asked if Bellingham can he be permanent captain one day, Tuchel said: “If you are the captain at the end of these matches you can for sure be the permanent captain.
“I think he loves to be with us at the moment. That’s what I feel. We had this small talk today about his role and we both had our hearts or stomachs said ‘let’s go again, let’s start (the match) again’.
“Then both our heads said ‘maybe 30 minutes is enough for today’ because he hasn’t played this quick turnaround through this season.
“He has done it before but not in the season so we didn’t want to be the first ones to try that.
“But even in this little encounter, you can see he is confident and happy to even help from the bench so yeah, it is a reward. It is good.
“He had a little niggle at the end of the match, hopefully it is nothing serious and he is available for Croatia.”
England travel to Rijeka on Saturday for the third of four Nations League matches in a meet-up that continued with an important, if low-key, win in Czechia.
“Do I ever have an excuse with you guys as an England manager? You never have an excuse,” Tuchel said with a smile. “I love sometimes these unglamorous results.
“Sometimes you just need to leave the stadium, win 2-0, have a relaxed evening and go onto the next one.
“You cannot be always glamourous and super exciting. You have to sometimes do the hard work with not a lot of praise because we were the favourites and we demanded the win from us.”
