The Thomas Tuchel trait that can help him master the hidden challenge of England job

After a good five minutes of Thomas Tuchel extolling Jordan Henderson’s leadership and experience, the new England manager was abruptly asked about the midfielder missing Ajax’s last European match due to suspension. He had told a referee to “f**k off”.

Quick as a flash, Tuchel asked “did he?” before adding, “I thought only Jude is doing that”.

That was in reference to a recent controversy with Jude Bellingham at Real Madrid, and was a display of impressive wit if Tuchel really didn’t know of Henderson’s red card.

Rather than an awkward discussion, Tuchel had the room laughing. Not for the last time, and not just because of that obsequious way an assembled press pack can sometimes do. He is genuinely funny.

That room was one of the VIP boxes overlooking the Wembley pitch, where the written media had been brought for their first proper briefing with Tuchel. There was a bar behind him, and a few jokes about the manager pouring pints for the pack, but he contented himself with a bottle of water in the way he always does.

The briefings are one of the more privileged parts of covering England, where you properly get to know a manager. They probably allow closer relationships than you can these days develop with Tuchel’s Premier League counterparts.

By the end of Gareth Southgate’s time, mind, it’s possibly true we had got to know him too well. The openness and willingness to talk on non-football matters from his early years had gone. Southgate was more weary as well as more wary, and would equivocate on everything much more. We were told that he’d felt he’d got undue abuse from fans for some of his positions on societal issues, for one. There was also just the reality that his own relationship with the media had gone up and down over the years. Southgate’s coaching team particularly hated leaks of squad and team news.

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Tuchel does not give the impression he really cares about any of that, and there’s certainly no equivocation with him. Friday afternoon was a reminder of how he’s ready to speak his mind, and does so in a charismatic and entertaining way. Many of us knew that from his time at Chelsea, especially when faced with Roman Abramovich's sanctioning, but the England job tends to involve a different level of scrutiny.

Take the way the German himself discussed recent reports that the Football Association has allowed him the flexibility for regular trips back home, which may mean missing club matches his players are involved in. Tuchel had brought it up in his general press conference and was willing to explain the rationale in the written briefing.

He asked whether seeing every player at least once was enough.

“How can I see them live more?”


By going to more games was the obvious response.

“I was at 25 matches in the last nine weeks.”

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He could have gone to more?

“Maybe I could have gone to 28,” Tuchel responded to the journalist in question, in that deadpan way, before discussing how he watches football.

“On the Premier League weekends where I don’t go, I watch a minimum of five matches live on a wide-angle screen. I watch more if you don’t see me than if you see me in the stadium because if I go to the stadium on a Saturday, I don’t see the match before and I don’t see the match after. If you don’t see me in the stadium, I watch three matches live.”

When later discussing how he went to Milan to visit Kyle Walker, Tuchel laughed again about how that meant he “missed a Premier League weekend… shame on me!”

There was then the deft way he handled the inevitable issue of the anthem. Tuchel admitted he won’t initially sing ‘God Save the King’… but then turned that on its head.

“I feel because it is that meaningful and it is that emotional and it is so powerful, that I have to earn my right to sing it. I feel that it is not just a given. You cannot just sing it. That’s why I decided that I will not sing it in my first matches.

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“I will earn it with results, with building a group, with doing my job properly and by creating a feeling where maybe even you guys say at some point, ‘Now it's time that you sing it, it feels like you proper earn it and you're a proper English guy now!’ Maybe I have to dive more into the culture and earn my right from you, from the players, from the supporters, so everyone feels like he should sing it now, he's one of our own, he's the English manager, he should sing it.”

It would be hard to see where any critical columnist could really go with that. A customary controversy has been headed off.

Tuchel is going to be very hard to catch out with any of that kind of stuff. He’s too on the ball, and also just likes to have a laugh. That has afforded him an ability to ward off any difficult discussions with humour.

From that, the press counted around 10 different newslines from a single briefing, be it from the anthem to how he felt the need to reward Marcus Rashford with a call-up to keep him on track. That is also more than you get in entire seasons with some Premier League managers.

Tuchel is going to be fun in that sense, and it makes these briefings something to look forward to. There’s even that sense of learning from someone who has been one of the brightest football minds of this millennium so far.

Which of course just leaves the important part of the results. Tuchel typically talked a good game there, too, saying he wants his England to reflect an English style and intensely take their play to the opposition.

That will only be revealed on the pitch. There are obvious questions over what seemed a strange squad selection.

Tuchel answered them with measure and charm, though. He has already got that side of the job right.