Thomas Tuchel has been appointed the new manager of the England men’s national team. Here, we look through his career to identify why the FA feel he’s the best man for the job.
A new era for the England men’s national team is now starting to take shape. While Gareth Southgate’s departure following their Euro 2024 final defeat to Spain brought a somewhat uncomfortable uncertainty after eight years of stability, his permanent successor has finally been confirmed.
Thomas Tuchel will take charge from 1 January 2025 until at least the end of the 2026 World Cup, with the Football Association (FA) essentially laying down the challenge of ending the Three Lions’ long wait for a major trophy, which is approaching 60 years.
The capture of Tuchel has come somewhat out of the blue. It was only in the past week or so that Pep Guardiola was being reported in the British media as the FA’s primary target, but with Manchester United also apparently interested in the German, England bosses made their move.
He will be just the third foreign manager of the men’s senior team, though there’s an overriding sense that England have landed one of the best in the business.
So, looking back over Tuchel’s managerial career to date, what are the key elements to focus on ahead his first venture into international football?
Making an Immediate Impact
It’s certainly worth pointing out that Tuchel hasn’t spent three full seasons in a job since he left Mainz in May 2014, having been in charge there for five years. With that in mind, there’ll be few expecting him to emulate Southgate’s eight years and four major international tournaments at the helm.
But at the same time, he’s never needed long to make an impact, winning at least one trophy with all four of the clubs he’s coached since departing Mainz.
His impact was especially swift at Chelsea – and we aren’t even talking about trophy success here.
Tuchel went unbeaten in first 14 matches in charge of the Blues following his January 2021 appointment; that’s the longest unbeaten run ever recorded by a Chelsea manager at the start of their time at the club.
Central to that was how Tuchel transformed them into a team that was so defensively sound. Chelsea kept clean sheets in 11 of those first 14 matches, conceding just once in each of the other three; over the previous two months, they had let in two or more goals four times across all competitions.
A 5-2 home defeat to West Brom admittedly brought an abrupt end to the unbeaten start and had Chelsea crashing back to earth, though they had been 1-0 up when Thiago Silva was sent off in the 29th minute.
With that in mind, between Tuchel’s appointment and the end of that season, Chelsea didn’t lose a game by more than one goal in any competition unless they’d had a man sent off.
It’s evidence that Tuchel can come into a new environment and bring positive change quickly, an encouraging trait when you consider time is of the essence in international football. He won’t have weeks on end to test and tweak things on the training ground when he takes up his position in January, so being able to get his ideas across in a timely manner will be important.
However, critics would – fairly – point to his underwhelming start to life at Bayern Munich as a potential cause for concern. He won just two of his first seven games across all competitions after replacing Julian Nagelsmann in March 2023, though Bayern did end up winning the title despite them behind a point adrift when he took over.
Big-Game Manager
Most would agree that Southgate did a pretty good job overall with England. He restored some pride in the men’s team, and although the football didn’t always capture the imagination, he led them to a World Cup semi-final and back-to-back European Championship finals.
The issue, then, wasn’t so much general results, but getting results in the biggest games when it mattered most.
England were outclassed in the 2018 World Cup semi-final by Croatia, and then in the two Euros finals, first by Italy in 2021 and then Spain earlier this year.
There was a consensus Southgate didn’t have the tactical acumen to get positive results against the best teams when the pressure was really on. Sure, England took Italy to penalties in the Euro 2020 final while it required a late winner for Spain to beat them 2-1 at Euro 2024, but both games were very one-sided.
Tuchel, however, can at least point to some successes on the big stage.
During those first few months at Chelsea, his team frustrated Manchester City in their FA Cup semi-final to secure a deserved 1-0 win. Then, a little over a month later, they beat Pep Guardiola’s men again by the same scoreline to win the Champions League final.
While Chelsea relied on some desperate defending at times in the latter success, City didn’t actually create much in the way of clear-cut openings. The Blues also played some mightily effective football, carving City open at times with their quick transitions and intricate combination play.
Given England’s struggles in certain types of games under Southgate, it feels like wins of those kind will have likely played a part in Tuchel landing this job and this ought to be seen as encouraging in that respect.
However, we also have to remember that those achievements were over three years ago, and the following season Chelsea lost to Liverpool on penalties in both the EFL Cup and FA Cup finals. His Bayern side also allowed Real Madrid to fight back from the brink in last season’s Champions League semi-finals, with two late Joselu goals flipping the tie on its head as Die Roten ultimately ended the season trophyless.
Tuchel does have big successes he can look back on, but his record isn’t infallible.
Tactical Flexibility
Considering Tuchel does have ties to England in that he’s managed in the Premier League before, it’s only natural that many people with a vested interest in the Three Lions are going to more vividly recall his time at Chelsea than Borussia Dortmund, PSG or Bayern.
In that sense, there might be an expectation that the setup he used frequently at Stamford Bridge – a back three and wing-backs – is what he’d look to implement with England. However, there’s no evidence that he’ll prioritise that from the off, and if he does, it won’t be because he has a system he sticks to dogmatically.
Wherever he’s been, Tuchel has shown an ability to adapt to the players at his disposal. At Chelsea, for instance, it made sense to go with a back three because the aging Thiago Silva was still so important but might have been exposed in a back four.
At Bayern, he very rarely set his team up with a back three, usually going with a 4-2-3-1, while at Dortmund he predominantly went with a fluid 4-3-3 that could often resemble a 4-2-3-1 similar to the one used by his predecessor Jürgen Klopp, albeit with a greater focus on possession.
That desire to keep the ball has been a common theme through most of his time in the top divisions. Tuchel’s teams are used to seeing a lot of the ball, and as such, since the start of the 2015-16 season, only Guardiola has seen his teams average more successful passes per game (545) than the German among managers in the top five leagues.
And yet, there was an aggressive quality to his Chelsea side that helped make them a threat in transition, something that could be seen in those successes over City during Tuchel’s first few months at Stamford Bridge.
England fans will undoubtedly hope he’s able to inspire a similar potency in conjunction with possession, as Southgate’s brand of football was often criticised for being too unimaginative and slow.
The graphic below succinctly highlights how Tuchel’s teams have generally been much less ponderous than England were at Euro 2024, and that will be seen as a good thing by many.
Concerns were also levelled at England’s approach to pressing during Euro 2024. They allowed opponents 16.1 passes on average before engaging with a defensive action (PPDA), meaning they were less aggressive in their pressing than 15 teams at the tournament. By contrast, Tuchel’s Bayern side last season had a PPDA of 11.4 and averaged 9.2 high turnovers per match compared to the Three Lions’ 6.3 in the summer.
Tuchel also oversaw an increase in pressing intensity quite quickly during his early months at Chelsea. In the Premier League under Frank Lampard in 2020-21, the Blues averaged 6.3 high turnovers per game, but that went up to 8.2 for the rest of that season after Tuchel arrived.
Following an initial settling in period, Tuchel’s Chelsea then recorded at least 10 high turnovers in half of their final 14 league games of 2020-21 having only managed that three times in their first 24. Again, this all feeds into the idea Tuchel can demonstrate having made a tactical impact fairly quickly in the past.
Reuniting with Harry Kane
A few days ago, Harry Kane told Sky Germany: “I obviously know Thomas very well from the last year. He’s a fantastic coach and a fantastic person. I’m sure the FA will contact me when they know more about this issue.”
Presumably Kane’s phone started buzzing soon after as Tuchel was indeed the FA’s choice, and they will be reunited just a few months after they last worked together at Bayern Munich.
Kane is England’s top goalscorer of all time, having scored 68 goals in 101 appearances for his country, and so he has clearly already thrived on the international stage, but the fact that he was so productive in his season under Tuchel in Germany can only bode well for their future working relationship.
They may have been unable to win a trophy together, but the England captain scored an incredible 44 goals in 45 appearances in all competitions for Bayern last season under Tuchel, while also recording 12 assists. His goal tally came from an expected goals total of 37.4.
Kane scored 36 Bundesliga goals in just 32 games; only Gerd Müller (three times) and Robert Lewandowski have ever scored as many goals in a single Bundesliga campaign.
He was also directly involved in 12 goals in Bayern’s run to the Champions League semi-finals (eight goals, four assists), the most ever by an English player in a single campaign in the competition.
One criticism of Kane’s performances for England in recent times, especially at Euro 2024, has been his insistence on dropping deep from his position as the lone striker. Whether it was due to Tuchel’s instruction or simply trusting his club teammates to create enough without his deeper presence, Kane spent more time in and around the penalty area for Bayern, which could well have been the secret to that even greater goal potency in Germany.
As you can see from his touch zone maps below, 39% of Kane’s open-play touches in the Bundesliga under Tuchel came in the middle third of the pitch, compared to 44% for England at Euro 2024, while 23% of his Bayern touches were in the central zones of the final third, compared to 20% with his country at the Euros.
It should be noted that this could also just be due to Bayern generally dominating games more than England. They averaged 61.3% possession in the Bundesliga last season and 18.8 shots per game, compared to England’s 55.4% possession and 10.9 shots per game at the Euros.
Whoever the manager is, Kane would likely continue to score plenty of goals for England, but with Tuchel at the helm, it could perhaps bring just that little bit extra out of the Three Lions’ talisman.
Winning Record
A point of view that’s likely to be repeated by many as Tuchel’s record and career are analysed over the coming weeks and months is that the output from spells in charge of clubs like Bayern and Paris Saint-Germain need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
On that note, it’s probably fair to not get too carried away by Tuchel’s 75.6% Ligue 1 win rate because PSG are often in a league of their own – instead, we’ll look more closely at his record in the Champions League.
That is probably the best comparison for the major tournaments England play in. Sure, Tuchel has been in charge of clubs who are expected to win most of the time, but then you could argue similar for England at the World Cup and Euros. They also of course have a similar format to that of the Champions League (or at least when Tuchel has managed in it).
He’s taken charge of 67 matches in the Champions League, which for starters is more than double any other English manager ever and only 14 fewer than all English managers combined. His 40 Champions League victories is also more than the 30 recorded by all English managers in the competition’s history. That in itself is worth highlighting for the simple fact it demonstrates his experience managing and winning at an elite level for a long period of time.
While there are many who feel the England manager should be English, and it’s a perfectly understandable argument, there are no barriers in place to stop foreigners being the coach, so why not hire the person who you think provides the best chance of success? There simply isn’t an English coach out there with the reputation Tuchel has.
That of course extends to his record in Europe, as he boasts a 59.7% win rate in the Champions League; among managers to take charge of at least 50 games in the competition, only Louis van Gaal (60%) and Guardiola (63.6%) have won a greater proportion of matches.
Of course, Chelsea aren’t the only club Tuchel has taken to the Champions League final. Before moving to Stamford Bridge, he guided PSG to the showpiece in 2020. The tournament that season was somewhat reduced in length due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the quarter-finals and semi-finals played as one-off games rather than over two legs, but Tuchel still took PSG to their first ever Champions League final, before losing 1-0 to Bayern.
The point isn’t that he lost the game, however, it’s that he’s used to going deep into these competitions and understands the occasions.
He also lost only eight times across 48 games in the DFB-Pokal, FA Cup, EFL Cup, Coupe de France and Coupe de la Ligue, though granted, he would have faced his fair share of lower-league opposition in those competitions.
You can only beat what’s in front of you, however, and Tuchel has a decent record of doing just that. And while that’s a key factor, it’s just one part of what makes him attractive hire at this point for England.
Tuchel is widely regarded as being a football obsessive with a rich knowledge for all things tactics. He’s a big personality, has a track record of winning and is thought of as one of the best coaches in the world.
While there’s never any guarantee of success, and he’s not always lived up to expectations in the past, there aren’t many managers currently in the game who’d be considered a better appointment for a team that wants success quickly.
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