“Watching the Euros, I felt tension and pressure on the shoulders of the players,” Thomas Tuchel surmised when reflecting on Gareth Southgate’s final tournament as England manager, “they were more afraid... they were playing not to lose.”
Tuchel’s first tournament in charge of the Three Lions ultimately crumbled in an atmosphere of rampant fear. The revered tactician brought in to guard against the kind of helplessness which gripped England at the biggest moments under Southgate watched his side flail all the same.
