World Cup: Should Tuchel Remain England Manager?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30All the great deals happening now. Save big money at Menards. The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive but not well. From the BBC, it's the United States at 2.50. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. At the FIFA World Cup 2026, the Football Daily Podcast with Steve Crossman. Hello there, welcome to the Football Daily Podcast.

1:17In this episode, we'll be speaking to ESPN's Julien Leran, Guillaume Balaguet and Nader Manua and we'll be dissecting England's World Cup semi-final defeat to Argentina. Tina, we'll try and bring you some new stuff because I know we've been talking about it a lot already. We will definitely be getting into Thomas Tuchel's future. The discussion seems to be very much moving on to that, doesn't it? So we'll talk about that. We'll also talk about Harry Kane and whether or not this is his last World Cup in an England shirt. Certainly feels like it. Nadam, because the other two care less than us, let's be honest about England going out of a World Cup.

1:51How are you doing? How are you feeling? We've had a bit of time. Are you more reflective yet? Are you angry? Where are you at? No, to be honest, I'm very calm with these things anyway. I like to be more reflective because, you know, some of the ups and downs of football, like when you've got the ups, it feels great, but the downs are so, so deep that sometimes it's worth just watching a game, especially if allegedly you're going to be paid to think of it from a more neutral perspective. So I think by the end of the game, I had all the emotions. Like the first half, I thought England were really competitive and it's a really competitive game and it felt good.

2:24It felt like any England-Argentina game where England were a bit more streetwise than we've seen in all the years gone by. And as a consequence, I thought, okay, this could be it. And then England scored and I was like, this is going to be it. But then what happened next? I think, obviously this isn't a special thought or anything, but the better team comfortably went through in the end, which is a crazy thing to say. Because that drop-off from there being where they scored, England scored and they were in control. Well, not in control, England scored and they were leading and you could see how they were playing.

2:55and now on the sideline they've got all the subs it's a 20-something man squad they've got everything you need whatever spice you need for this game they're all available on the sideline managers there he's experienced he's the difference everything should have been great and then by the end you're thinking well what else did they expect because as well as England losing 2-1 Macalas has hit the post twice Pickford's making saves you know it was very much just a case of watching England just suffer for the end and yeah there's a disappointment but it feels like the right team went through unfortunately for England's side I think that's so true Guillaume, because normally in a situation like this, we might sort of need you and Jules, especially because we would sort of throw out the odd like, oh, can you believe that red card decision, et cetera, et cetera.

3:36But there is a bottom line there, isn't there? And Nadem just gave us it. Yes. There's also the impression as Nadem had and all of you that you're very, very close. You're very, very close. And this is not just a bad look, really what took it Argentina away, but certainly to get to that point where you could have beat Argentina in the semifinals of a World Cup, on the back of all the semifinals and all the finals, I would say, if you put it all in context, it's a competitive successful era, if you like. I'm sure we're going to drill into what's missing, not to get there, but there is, yeah, there are positives.

4:15I know nobody wants to hear them now, and a lot of it has to do with, as Nathan was saying, as as England were not scared of the kind of approach that you were to expect from Argentina, pushing the limit of the legality of the things that we're doing, unsettling players. I saw Bellingham doing that with Messi. Wrong person to do it with. But it is part of the game. And there was a street wideness, using again Nathan's word, that it was pleasing to see. So that's probably why nothing happened in the first half, because they were looking at eye to eye like two lions just about to jump, but nobody did.

4:55And then there were a lot of decisions that were being taken and I jumped to the end. And as a consequence, England seemed to have found one culprit, one to blame, the person to blame. And it's like we've been here before in a lot of what has happened. It all sounds so familiar. Right. Let's start with Thomas Tuchel. We'll have this discussion in any order, you know, looking at what he did or didn't do and talking about his future, Nadim, which has been the big topic of conversation and whether or not he should still be England manager going forward. Yeah, so there's somebody on this panel that has a strong view on this.

5:33It's not necessarily me, but if you are patient, that person that's laughing will tell you more. But I think the context that we need to understand here is like, who is Thomas Tuchel and who is Thomas Tuchel to English football? He's somebody that was brought in to try and take the team to the next level. Nobody was hiding that. And I think it's probably the first time in most of our lifetimes that that's ever been spoken about in that manner. They said Gareth Southgate is really good at building this energy, this rapport, these relationships, making the players feel good. But they've fallen at the last hurdle.

6:03We need someone with more edge, somebody that's not scared to make these bigger decisions and so on and so forth. So then when they go out and I listen to him say, oh, you know, there was this problem, that problem, so on and so forth. And then John's like, well, could you have done anything different? Well, I'm not sure. You know, we were tired. You know, it was this, it was that. For me personally, it's incredibly disappointing because he's supposed to help the nation and those players to sort of maximize their potential. And in my opinion, they have not done that essentially for the last few tournaments.

6:35because you could argue that England have been the favourite for basically every game Thomas Tuchel has had except for this last one. And even, not a lie, he was a favourite in this game as well. He was a favourite in this game. And when you look at the moments that are out there, I think the consensus from the general public is that he went too defensive. He talks about how Argentina were gaining control, gaining momentum. They were putting great balls into the box. And what makes me feel like really sick is when he said there was nothing we could do about that. You are the coach of this team, and this World Cup is so unique because essentially you have timeouts.

7:12Just before the hydration break or whatever in the 68th minute, Jordan Pickford has made a save, and he looks at the referee and says, we need a drink, we need a drink, can we have a drink? Because he knows the importance of that moment. You've got three or four minutes, which is never the case. This is the stuff, sorry, I'm on a bit of a rant here. Do it. But this is the type of stuff that when a goalkeeper would go down during a game and people are furious with it in the domestic league, no this isn't right they're trying to find a way to get out of this situation lo and behold that team comes out and there's a change in terms of how they're going to play for the better so for me Thomas Tuchel to see all the stuff that was essentially going wrong in this game because we can talk about the wider context and so on but see what's going wrong in this game and for him to almost be defeatist to say well yeah they're getting good crosses in they're getting good momentum so let's just sit back and absorb it and see what can happen I think for me a stronger manager and stronger leaders in my opinion I want to say leader I mean people who do lead from the very front find ways to impact the game to try and help the momentum swing back in England's favour and I don't think it could be a case of going back 100 % but what is the message when the manager says we're going to a back five what is the message when that back five also has Harry Kane five yards in front of them what is the message when the team is like well we're just going to kick it long what is the message when it's accepted by the manager on the sideline who was brought in and paid to be the difference I think Jules will tell you this start I think from after Gordon scored he scored the goal till it went 2-1 it was 12 % possession that is goal kicks free kicks throw-ins that's what that is since when has that ever been acceptable not just from say Tuuken in this moment but from any manager in the last four of a World Cup if this was Paraguay I would say it's too little so what are we going to say about an England side that features some of the best players that this nation has ever seen But you don't have a strong opinion.

9:03No, I don't know. That was brilliant.

9:05Julien Laurens:That was absolutely brilliant. Go on then, Jules. You know what? I don't know what's more BS, if it's the interview with John or actually what we saw on the pitch. But this is Thomas Tuchel for you. It's never his fault. It's never on me. It's never me. I would never say I could have done better. I could have done this. It's like, I'm not sure. But then the players, while the players invited the pressure, the players could not stop the momentum. the players this and the players that and the players were tired which by the way Kelly Summers asked Harry Kane if maybe they were tired and he said no I don't think so and yet Harry Kane also said well there's a piece missing and we thought that piece was going to beat Tomas Tuchel because he's a great tactician because he won the Champions League with Chelsea because he's this because he's that and to be fair I was lied to I was lied to because I heard oh we're going to play with intensity we're going to do this now that I'm in charge of England it's going to be great and it's going to be permutations and movement and this and that.

10:00Julien Laurens:And I've seen nothing in this World Cup, nothing at all of what Thomas Tuchel said when he took over. And for me, I would not even keep him. I said that and that's what Nathan was referring to. What I saw yesterday was scandalous. I'm sorry. The last half hour of that game was scandalous. From an England point of view, when you also have that break that Nathan mentioned and you could have changed things. How many times in this World Cup have we seen those hydration breaks change the momentum of a game completely, whether it's in the first half or in the second half, because it breaks the game up to start with.

10:35Julien Laurens:And then those managers have three to four minutes to actually say, hey, why are you doing? Why are you so deep? Because right now, Thomas Tuchel is making us believe that he didn't ask the players to be so deep. He's that they're doing it themselves. Okay, fair enough. But you've had 13 minutes already after the golden goal until the break where you saw what was happening and you could have changed everything and you didn't. And for me, that's probably the most damning thing because we've seen managers before, before those breaks, you can shout on the touchline. It's a big stadium. Players don't hear you or they don't want to hear you.

11:04Julien Laurens:And you probably feel that there was not much you could have done, not with a break halfway through the second half. This is not true. He could have said, okay, I'm not happy about what I've just seen. We have to go back to the medium blog. I'm going to bring Watkinson and Rashford and Saka or whoever to regain that momentum, regain the control. or certainly if he could not do that, at least not invite the pressure like they did. And for me, everything he did during that game was an embarrassment. Still, that tackle from Jed Spence was good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Better than what Elliot Anderson did on the Enzo goal.

11:38Guillaume, I suspect you might be more, slightly more nuanced in your take. I'm just reading your face.

11:45Julien Laurens:He's older, he's wiser. You know, that's why we have him on the show too. this is the usual narrative this is the we heard all this for the last 30 years it's a complex entity a football team and a football match but we tend to especially the 24 hours after the game to just find one person to blame that's what's happened sometimes it's two depending who misses penalties but for me it's a much more complex situation and I don't have all the answers but I'm going to paint to you a different picture. I think Tuchel was actually biting his tongue a little bit, even though quite clearly he was criticizing the players.

12:28He could have thrown them under the bus. Because what happened after the game, after the goal, the England goal, this is a good exercise to actually go back and watch the last half an hour, is that the manager asked the players to keep pushing up. And you know what? They did it. they pushed up in two occasions when they were trying to put pressure especially in Spence side they didn't do it properly and they found the opportunity to either put crosses or put a shootout and was blocked but still you start thinking 25 minutes before the end of the semi-finals World Cup and what I saw was a team dropping deep everybody just making sure that there were no mistakes that as it had happened against Mexico, and the team was praised for it, that nothing would happen, that they could have dealt with the crosses.

13:26Now, the manager at that point, of course, he's got two options during the hydration break and the substitutions to send a message. But I've got the impression that the manager realised that what the team was asking him to do, and sometimes managers have to react to that, to the dynamic of the team and the dynamic of the moment and of the game. The team was asking them to be protected even more. It's easy on hindsight for players to say, oh, but you should have put Rashford on. If you put Rashford on, on the left-hand side for Gordon, is he going to be ready to also defend Messi? Is he? He may be, he may not be.

14:06Well, if he's going to be mostly with an Argentina that have taken over the ball, and as you had seen in other games like this, we're going to put everything on the table to turn things around. If he's going to be defending all the time, the last 20, 25 minutes, shouldn't you put a defender? What would he be defending for the whole 25 minutes? Well, if you listen to what I'm saying, maybe the team was asking for that. Maybe the centre forward was defending on the edge of the box instead of being on the halfway line to receive balls to actually release that pressure. There was not that opportunity.

14:45Maybe the mistake was not to have that opportunity, to have Oli Watkins there, for instance. So what I'm saying is I know and I'm hearing and I'm seeing that we can sort this out by blaming somebody and take it from there and then you can talk about his future. But how about if the players have got certain responsibilities to what happens on the pitch? Why doesn't he know why they were so passive? Why doesn't he know? Because he was not on the pitch. Because he was not the guy that actually had to put pressure and wasn't doing it. Because he was told to do it, but wasn't doing it. So I just wonder if we have to share responsibility and then go deeper and say, why has he happened?

15:28The same thing, whatever manager. Is it to do, perhaps, with players feeling at that point, 20 minutes to go to the end of you know minute 85 and you're winning whatever it is are the players thinking I'm not going to be caught on a mistake here I'm not going to be the one in the front cover would it be a little bit of that or if it's not that would it be that they haven't got this idea of being brave in their heads it's not in the DNA it hasn't been long enough for Tuchel to put that into their heads and it needs longer to actually do that and I do believe we will see but I do believe that it's the end of an era for many of these players because in the Euros, there's going to be a lot of changes.

16:10And I think the profile, I think Tuchel has been surprised by the players in the highest of, when the stake is at the highest, he's been surprised by them. And perhaps he will make decisions that have to do with what, as Jules is saying, more what he wanted to do because quite clearly, he cannot do it in a World Cup anyway, but he can come closer to it if he actually chooses his players a little bit braver. So, Guillaume, the point that you make, like when I think about the situation, like this is a privilege for me to say, there's like a micro point and a macro point here. And I think the point you're making about the wider context of England, I think is a valid one.

16:48But the micro is about this particular game. Now, I don't know if anybody here has listened to Mark Gahey speak after the game. This is one of the defenders that played in the game. And when he's being interviewed, one of the first things he said is, we should have carried on. He said, for some reason, when we should have carried on pushing, when we took the lead, for some reason, people thought we just wanted to defend. And that's coming from a defender. And the reason I mention this is contextually defending itself at its best starts from front to back, not back to front. If your attackers are on the front foot, it means the midfielders are on the front foot, it means the defenders are on the front foot.

17:22To give your country credit, the day before when Spain played, Mbappe was offside maybe five or six times. That's because there was more pressure coming from the forwards, the midfielders and the back line. So whereas a lot of people have this sort of like insecurity about someone like Mbappe's pace, so it makes them drop off. Instead, because the whole team is forward, everybody goes forward for England. And Mark Gahey is saying this as a defender. So if he was the one that decided, I just want to drop, I just want to drop, he would not have used those words. But very quickly as a defender to put like real life experience into this, the amount of times I've been playing in the game and I'll see a striker say, guys, come up, come up.

17:58why he's so deep come up was because they're not putting pressure on the ball but make it worse now from an England perspective where was Harry Kane in that second half? Where was he playing? Like he's choosing to defend but where's he defending from? The moment everybody retracts into this position that very much sets the tone. I think there is something to be said about defending but for me, especially at this level where we're talking about the best four teams in the world and I understand it's easy for me to say watching from the TV screen Spain in their first game and even Argentina after they took the lead they did not let any defenders for France nor England breathe when they had possession because they were defending so well and as a consequence it takes the it comes into the box everyone thinks the same everybody everybody's a leader everybody's responsible for what they have to do on the pitch everybody's solidarity to whatever else is struggling with and helping and they can help with everybody body and they've been chosen because of that but mostly they all have the same idea and that is a 30-year job yeah so you've got that advantage that's fair that's completely fair but that kind of leans into my point just a little bit because for as much as spain have the advantage with their system that they had and de la fuente coming through the youth system and so on and like the spanish culture search within say youth football men's women's whatever you want to have it for me Thomas Tuchel on the sideline if he sees his team start to do something he doesn't like change it some people wanted to praise him for making changes at halftime in the game against Norway even though I think those changes were like poor then he reversed them well sense that something is going wrong here my opinion again just my opinion if your number nine is playing the same depth as your number six in your midfield in a game where you need to at some point maintain possession at least to take a little bit of sting out of the game then change the nine for somebody else because somebody can go into that midfield who is a midfielder that's my that's my take on that looking up the field for the defenders they'll get the ball they'll look up and it's really basic like super basic football but they want an out ball but you can't really have it because the nine and other attackers are right next to you like the players can demand that those players go higher but the manager can make the call about what the right decision is for me again this is just for me as soon as England starts sagging all the way back with Kane going to where he was going that's one of the reasons why the possession was so low and And the moment that possession gets so low, you get a chance to see the best of any side.

20:24And now you've got a chance to see the best of Messi, Enzo Fernandez, Alexis McAllister, all these guys. And I would say if Kane wasn't called Harry Kane and the performance was going the way it was going from your number nine, who's not on there to be a defender, I think the change would have been made. But instead, they persisted. And I think that played into Argentina's hands. And the signaling was, let's just defend. And it's okay that Harry can stay in the 18-yard box because he can head it and kick it really far. And I'm not into that.

21:01The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story. and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well. From the BBC, it's the United States at 250. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

21:34Five life sports. So here's the first ball of this series. All the cricket you laugh. Shave for LBW. Ouch. Lives on BBC Sounds. Smash straight back down the ground, this girl. Hear ball-by-ball coverage of the biggest competitions on the domestic and international circuits. It's a fourth week and it's the huge one. Jeez. Wush. Settle down, tough. Sorry, man. Cricket on Five Live Sport. Oh, I've lived every ball of this. Listen on BBC Sounds. At the People World Cup 2026, the Football Daily Podcast. With Steve Crossman. Listen on BBC Sounds. Jules, let me bring you in on it then. What I find really interesting is the difference between what we're being told from the dressing room was the message and the actual decisions, specifically the substitutions that Thomas Tuchel made and whether there was maybe a bit of a difference between those two things.

22:36we can tell from what everybody has said that the plan was at 1-0 up, keep going, try and get another goal. But for the players on the pitch, was that necessarily being communicated to them by way of the decisions that the manager was making? Or was he saying one thing and doing something slightly different with his decisions?

23:02Julien Laurens:I mean, I think Nadam said it really well. the message that Tuchel sent with the substitutions. But even, again, even in that break that we mentioned, we'd already seen after the golden goal for 12, 13, 14 minutes before the drink breaks, that England had decided to just retract completely and gave up the ball and refused to play and just invited the pressure. So Tuchel saw all of that. And yet, I think the Gordon-Konza substitution has to be one of the worst ever, probably on the same page as the Rice for Bern substitutions And again, because you send the wrong message and Tuchel can say anything he wants.

23:39Julien Laurens:More and more players now. And there's more and more reports because players are talking, agents talking, family members are talking. And players were surprised. Players were surprised by Tuchel, by his message, by what he said in that break, by what he was doing, by his body language on the touchline. And I was super disappointed because I love Thomas Tuchel. We go back a long way. He was obviously the PSG coach. I told this story many times, but I was his lucky charm at Chelsea. Every time I was there, He never lost. He kept saying to me, please come to the next home game. Please come to the next game.

24:08Julien Laurens:Please. So we have a great relationship, but I was super disappointed by the fact that he just almost just gave up on this team. It felt to me that he just dissociated himself from that team on the pitch. And every time the camera was on him, on the touchline, he was looking at his shoes, walking up and down, and I never saw him shouting anything. And Scaloni is obviously a very different personality or others even, but it didn't look like Thomas Tuchel was saying anything to his players where you could see that they just needed more guidance and that never came and Guillaume is probably right I think there's a psychology problem in this team and I go back to that I thought great quote from Harry Kane to Kelly Summers on BBC TV after the game saying there's a piece missing and I don't do jigsaws I don't know if it's a big piece, a small piece a corner, I don't know what it is but there's clearly something missing And the different managers now with different generations, whether it's a leadership, whether it's mentally, I don't know what it is, but it's clearly something missing.

25:12Nidim, let me throw this to you then. So is it possible that part of, because obviously a big part of the conversation is the reason Tuchel was brought in is to succeed in these moments and he failed in this moment. And that's obviously a completely legitimate argument to make. what I'm wondering is whether or not there is something in the idea that because this is really the first time he has seen his players in this position maybe it's unfair just to kind of say oh well he hasn't managed to do the thing he said he could do and what we've seen a lot is the resurface of that quote that he said about Gareth Southgate's England team just after he'd got the job, Thomas Tuchel had got the job and he said something along the lines of, you know, there was more kind of fear of losing than enjoyment at the prospect of winning.

26:06Maybe that is to do with the team and he just wasn't able to change it as opposed to the idea that here's this guy who should have been able to do it and oh, look, he couldn't. Therefore, he's got to go. The got to go part, like I don't really know about that in general, but I think you've been very, very charitable there. I think you've been super, super charitable because ultimately, like, he's been in that job for two years now and he knows those players as well as you can know those players in such a short period of time. But also, when it comes down to this tournament, this is something he has spent two years essentially preparing for and the amount of money that, say, the England national team will invest into absolutely everything, the access that's available and so on.

26:48And for it to go out in the way that it did, like... How do you simulate this, though? How in any of that... How does anyone... Can you simulate that situation? That's the thing. How does anyone? How does anyone? I think for me, like he's obviously been a very, very successful like club manager and the certain traits which he has in there, which he could have brought into this tournament because he could, for example, be like a terrible manager, like the worst in all of the world, but tactically could be a genius. And that is what he felt like they needed yesterday. You know, he could be a manager.

27:19There's some managers who are super nice. Like some people are being very critical of Southgate, saying he was scared to make the right decision in the right moment. And I thought personally yesterday, like, Tuchel needed to be brave enough to make stronger decisions the moment he could see things going the other way. And that is essentially, as I say, what he's been brought in here for. Because in two years' time, I'll be honest with you, for the next two years in England are playing or whatever, like, there's a good chance Italy might be better. The Netherlands might be better. France might be better.