The FA should be foaming at the mouth for Thomas Tuchel
England’s national team are at a crossroads. While the women’s team enjoyed the summer of their lives, their male counterparts went without a win in six Nations League group games, finishing slap bang in last of their group.
An embarrassing 4-0 loss to Hungary on home soil epitomised England’s woes.
Under current manager Gareth Southgate, the Three Lions have finished as semi-finalists in the 2018 World Cup, and losing finalists in the 2020 European Championships. Recent results, however, have some sections of the England faithful calling for change ahead of the winter World Cup in Qatar.
Now, only weeks away from the tournament, the FA must make a choice. If they decide to stick with Southgate and the trend of poor results continues, the England manager – who was once a cult hero, runs the risk of destroying a respectable legacy. In a group with the USA, Iran, and Wales, failing to qualify would equate to a national embarrassment.
The FA needs to show it has the cojones to make the big decisions required of a national board, and a golden opportunity may well have just fallen into their laps.
As was widely reported this morning, Thomas Tuchel would be interested in taking the England National team job, should the opportunity arise. This is no regular manager in cup competitions. Saying he is the Mike Tyson of knockout football would not be an understatement. The German is a freak of nature.
At Chelsea in a season and a half, he reached four out of a possible five finals, winning the most prestigious of them all, the Champions League. He lost in finals on penalties twice as well as a 1-0 defeat to Leicester in which Tielemans scored a wonder goal. The only final he didn’t reach during his time at the club was the 2021/2022 Champions League, where eventual winners Real Madrid knocked Chelsea out in extra-time of the semi-final second leg at the Bernabeu.
This recent example of cup dominance is not something new. At PSG he won two out of four domestic cup competitions, as well as reaching a final in another. Perhaps more impressively, at Dortmund Tuchel reached the final of the DFB-Pokal in 15/16, before winning it the year after.
Thomas Tuchel took Chelsea to 4 finals of the 5 cup competitions in which he managed the club. He has reached 8 finals of the last 9 cups across last 2 clubs including 2/3 Champions League finals. His only non-final elimination since 2019 in any cup was extra time v Real Madrid.
— Colin Millar (@Millar_Colin) September 7, 2022
Questions may be raised about sacking a manager this close to the start of the tournament. Tuchel, however, is a man with a strong track record of taking over a club before guiding them to cup success. At the end of January 2021, the German took over a floundering Chelsea side. Four months later, Chelsea had won the Champions League for only the second time in their history.
Tuchel is a cup specialist, and the World Cup is the most prestigious cup of them all. A tournament England have only won once before in their history, is up for the grabs again this year. There will not be an opportunity to get a manager as qualified as Tuchel once his coveted signature is taken. It is time for the FA to take a leap of faith, and football may just come home for the second time in the same year.
