‘Just nuances,” Thomas Tuchel says. As an outsider turned insider, England’s new permanent manager was mulling over the team’s long history of falling short. Was it tactical? A lack of individual quality? Perhaps, but in Tuchel’s eyes losing a major final on penalties or to a late goal was not necessarily evidence of a seismic failing. Sometimes, as the German says, success in international football really is just about mastering the little details in the biggest moments.
That said, the Football Association’s hope is that replacing Gareth Southgate with one of the world’s leading managers will ensure that England finally add a second star to the shirt. Tuchel does not hang around. The German’s aim is simple: win the 2026 World Cup. It is safe to assume that he will not view this job as a “process” or a “project”.
For a character such as Tuchel, winning is everything. It took him four months to turn Chelsea from a mid-table team into the champions of Europe. For the FA, after Southgate lost two finals, a semi-final and a quarter-final by the finest of margins, the thinking has to be that a manager with Tuchel’s knockout record at club level could be the missing ingredient for England.
Questions of nationality aside, it is hard to argue with the appointment. But an interesting pushback against the argument that the England manager should be English, because international football is supposed to be our best against yours, is that the FA’s task had to be to hire a world-class manager.
The appeal is obvious. A view from close to the England camp is that a squad full of stars needs guidance from a big manager. Where are the suitable English candidates with heaving trophy cabinets and a record of handling elite players? Graham Potter foundered at Chelsea. Eddie Howe has had one season in the Champions League at Newcastle. Lee Carsley, England’s reluctant interim, has struggled with the glare of the media. Tuchel has managed Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappé and Neymar.
Yet it is interesting to go back to 2007 and the last time England’s men went overseas for a coach. “Fabio Capello is widely recognised as one of the world’s finest coaches,” Trevor Brooking said after working on the FA’s recruitment process. “He has achieved huge success wherever he has worked.”
Not with England, though. Capello won a Champions League with Milan and multiple titles in Spain and Italy but international football defeated him. Southgate, by contrast, was the failed Middlesbrough manager who understood the culture of English football and made the nation believe again.
Club football is different, more intense in the day-to-day. But while the standard of football is higher, the best club managers have not necessarily been the best international managers in recent years. The most talented coach at Euro 2024 was Germany’s Julian Nagelsmann, who has won the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich and taken the unfancied RB Leipzig to a Champions League semi-final, but he went out of a home tournament in the quarter-finals after defeat by Spain.
It is a mixed bag. Since the turn of the millennium, there have been great contributions to the international game from club heavyweights. There was Vicente del Bosque inheriting Spain after Luis Aragonés triumphed at Euro 2008 and taking a generational team to further triumphs at the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012. Marcello Lippi, dominant with Juventus in the 90s, won the 2006 World Cup with Italy before failing at the next two tournaments. Guus Hiddink, who took PSV Eindhoven to the European Cup in 1988, made South Korea, Australia and Russia overachieve. Roberto Mancini, who won titles with Internazionale and Manchester City, was inspirational when Italy won Euro 2020, although he was less impressive when they failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup.
The mistake is assuming that proficiency in one discipline is automatically transferable to another. Hansi Flick, a treble winner with Bayern in 2020, messed up Germany’s 2022 World Cup but now has Barcelona leading La Liga. Louis van Gaal had varying degrees of success in his three spells in charge of the Netherlands but he never got to a final and did not qualify for the 2002 World Cup. Luis Enrique – treble winner with Barça in 2015 – led Spain to a second-round defeat by Morocco in Qatar.
Humiliated, Spain looked within, promoting Luis de la Fuente from the under-21s and reaping the rewards at Euro 2024. Argentina did similar with Lionel Scaloni, who has won a World Cup and two Copa América titles.
Zlatko Dalic, who flew below the radar at club level, has performed wonders with Croatia since 2017. Joachim Löw, who won the World Cup with Germany in 2014, had a few so-so jobs before dedicating himself to international management. Fernando Santos, European champion with Portugal in 2016, picked up trophies here and there with Porto and AEK Athens. Didier Deschamps won Ligue 1 with Marseille and took Monaco to a Champions League final but his reputation has largely been built on his work with France. We are not talking about rivals to Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti and Jürgen Klopp.
Ultimately, some managers are more suited to international football than others. Tuchel spoke about needing to adjust to the slower rhythm, to having less contact with his players. “I felt like a eunuch in a harem,” Arrigo Sacchi said of coaching Italy. He dominated Europe with Milan but did not enjoy the lack of time available to work on tactical systems in international team training.
“There are definitely different rules of engagement [for appointing a national-team manager],” Dan Ashworth, the FA’s former technical director, said in Jonathan Northcroft’s and Rob Draper’s book, Dear England. “Should he have international experience? Does that matter? It’s a really different role. You don’t really coach that much. They join you on Sunday night. They’re in recovery mode for days one and two and then you’re Matchday -2 and MD -1. Then it’s a game, recovery, Matchday -1, play and they’re gone. That’s a really different skill set and probably harder.”
Tuchel is about to find out. He is brilliant, smart and innovative. But details come into it in tournament play. Marcus Rashford’s penalty hits the post in a shootout and England lose the final to Italy. Southgate gambles on Luke Shaw’s fitness and finds he has no fit left-backs.
These are the nuances that will run through Tuchel’s mind. He is world class and is capable of outwitting all comers. But if anyone assumes that Tuchel alone will make England favourites for the World Cup, they have not been paying attention to history.
