Did the FA make a mistake with Tuchel? | The Football Boardroom

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1:00Henry:Welcome to the Football Boardroom. H, I can see you've tried to outdo me in the Hideous Curtains competition. I guess it's something like 6.30am in Atlanta, the morning after one of the most disappointing nights I've ever faced as a fanatical England fan. How are you feeling? And tell us what it was like after the game. Two hours sleep, fairly troubled, disturbed sleep. I mean, it was a bit of a nightmare, wasn't it? I mean, it was just walking back from the match, having done my work, going to meet with a friend's England fan who's out here, and just being stopped by bunters and the England fans, because everything's very close in Atlanta, you can walk to the stadium, and the mood was actually towards the Argentinians was fairly respectful.

1:53The anger, and I use that word very, you know, it is anger, was towards Thomas Ducal from what he did or didn't do. They're very defensive subject. I mean, I know we sort of swap messages during the game, after the game, and I know that you were angry. So just before we get into the contract extension, and I know you were very strong in what you spoke about it, Tell me what your take on the game was and particularly what he did, because this plays into everything that's in the boardroom. And the FA was supposedly investing a lot of money in and not actually having someone who would get us over the line.

2:37What was your take on it? Because there's anger out here.

2:40Henry:Yeah, well, let me speak for 30 seconds just as a fan. Probably a lot of our audience similar. My first memory is the 70 World Cup. I haven't missed an England game since then. and I had a huge gathering of family and friends to watch the game here last night and never felt sadder at the final whistle, actually, because it was the manner of the defeat that hurt so much. You don't need to be a player, a manager, a coach, let alone a truly elite one, to feel as everybody felt, 30 million fans felt in the 72nd minute when you take off an attacking threat like Anthony Gordon and replace with an additional defender, you are telling your team we hold on to what we've got despite the fact it's been going well.

3:29Henry:And it had a horrible sense of inevitability. They were some of the worst 20 minutes I've seen in a long time. And it was just a horrible way to lose. And I can't get off the feeling that it was a simple coaching decision to defend what we've got that worked quite well in two previous games, but where the context was wildly different. And as I say, I don't think there was an England fan anywhere in the world who thought that was a good idea and who felt anything other than horror and fear from the moment we decided to sit back and encourage the best player in the world to get into the game and take us on.

4:08Henry:And that's the way it played out. There was a moment in the first half when the cameras zoomed in on Fabio Capello, which immediately gave me sort of painful flashbacks to before 2010 when the FA, basically they tweaked his contract. It wasn't so much a contract extension. They removed a clause but obviously made it more favorable, strengthened his position because he'd had a good qualifying campaign. And we did an earlier podcast in which you said when the FA, in fact, we were in the studio when the announcement came through early in the morning about this contract extension. And you were very critical of the Football Association decision to extend his contract.

4:53Henry:I was, but I also said, well, I said two things. The first thing is, and I stand by this, that I thought the appointment of Thomas Tuchel in the first place was imaginative, bold, and I liked it. And it was quite an unconventional or certainly unusual appointment, not of a elite club coach towards the back end of a great career, but an elite club coach at their absolute peak on a short term contract. We don't know the details, but it was widely briefed, heavily performance based for which Reid, a massive bonus for taking us that one step more, having been to a couple of big finals to win a final, the World Cup final.

5:42Henry:That was the deal. Let's go get an elite guy and let's see if he can take us that final step and pay him a lot of money if he succeeds in the next 18 months to two years. And I really liked that arrangement. And I thought that arrangement was meaningfully undermined by a decision to extend it on the basis of a decent qualification period and other arguments that were sort of played out. But fundamentally, it took away that hard edged, very commercial arrangement before we saw how it played out. And if we hadn't done that, we'd be sitting this morning expecting the FA and the management team at the FA to be conducting a really cold, hard, analytical review of our performance at this tournament.

6:31Henry:then meaningful review discussions with Thomas Tuchel who'll have his own views on on how the tournament went positively negatively points of mitigation and that would have led to a grown-up discussion about whether Thomas was the right person to take us through to a home euros or not from the FA standpoint and from the manager's standpoint that would have been a really smart way to run this. And I would argue, as a chief executive, you get paid to do that. When you're the chief executive, when you're the board, you have to look beyond the end of the next game. Okay, you have to look ahead and you have to think about the scenarios.

7:11Henry:And the scenario that this tournament might not go so well, wasn't a wild, fantastical scenario. It was probably one of two. It goes well. It doesn't go well. In both cases, good idea to be in control of the situation and be able to look at it in a cold hearted way. And I think the FA gave that up, which means, H, sitting here today, I don't think we're going to get that level of critique by the employer of this employee and how he's performed so far in the crucial job of managing the England team at a major tournament. But that's unhealthy. I mean, you would have had those conversations with your club managers at Liverpool, Chelsea and Villa on a fairly, I mean, I can imagine you in the boardroom talking to a manager and it would be very much performance related.

8:02The FA cannot now have that conversation with Thomas Tuchel.

8:06Henry:Well, they can, but there's no edge to that conversation. There's no edge. And, you know, and you can see that age because one of the symptoms that that relationship is on a different footing to that which it would have been under the previous short term contract. some of the messaging that's already come out feels to me as though we're being asked to accept that, you know, we've done well, you know. Somebody said semi-final is, you know, is a good achievement for, you know. You were about to swear then, CP. That was, and I think you would have reflected the mood. You mentioned some of the briefing coming out.

8:48I mean, there was a short statement from the Chief Executive, Mark Bullingham, which was shared last night. I'm usually pinged it out on social media and social media, it was a fairly toxic ambush it got. So just to go through that, this is the statement from Mark Bullingham, partly to the media, but mainly as a conduit to the fans. So it is heartbreaking to be so close, which I think is a strong opening. The players and Thomas gave it everything today and the squad coaches and staff could not have worked harder during the tournament. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I think 10 out of 10 for effort.

9:29Yeah. I would like to thank them all and also give my heartfelt thanks to our wonderful fans here in the USA and at home. We felt your support every step of the way and we're all so disappointed not to go further. I mean, the key thing is we're all so disappointed. first disappointed is not a strong enough word whoever came up with that word disappointed is absolutely not the word that people are feeling this is not something you can shrug off after all the years of hurt after all the costs that people have forked out after all the emotional toil after all the conversations they've had to have at home i've been talking to the fans as they've gone game by game can you go back home you're talking to to work partners all those issues not to go further.

10:19Was the cut for him getting to the semi-final? We have to be brutal about this. We don't know what the performance related was, but the feeling from the Football Association is that they actually think that the semi-final is okay.

10:35Henry:Well, one thing's for sure. It's quite possible that the performance-related element of Thomas Tuchel's contract does have a sort of escalating element to it. So it's possible he's been paid a bonus for getting this far. But I wouldn't argue that performances have been great. And then we bring into the frame other aspects of Thomas's management so far as England coach. Let's talk about the most important first phase, which was getting the squad right for the tournament. There are huge question marks about whether squad selection was handled sensibly and prudently. The way that two or three key players, let's name Saka, Rhys James and Declan Rice, to name three, people who fully fit, middle of the season, well, no, those three are elite starting players.

11:30Henry:They've obviously come to the tournament in different stages of lacking fitness. But you're not going to leave two of them out. You're not going to leave the Arsenal boys out. No, I'm not saying leave them out, but I'm saying, for goodness sake, make sure you've got proper cover in those positions and you know when i heard it said after reese broke down there was a press conference where thomas said something along the lines of we couldn't have anticipated that reese james would break down do me a favor yeah everyone in the country knew it was an issue you said to me three seconds you texted me three seconds after the squad was announced.

12:09Henry:Three seconds later saying, goodness me, I hope he's thought through that Rhys is never going to get through a full tournament because he's lacking cover at right back. Just one thing which has just been in my head throughout this tournament. This is Harry Kane's last World Cup and I know that he spoke last night and there might be a suggestion he could come back in 36 because he's games when he is 36 in four years time. But realistically he's not going to and the issue, the reason why there's, one of the reasons why there's so much anger is because this had to be the tournament that England nailed it and why you accepted a very well paid overseas coach to come in and get England over the line because there is no obvious successor to Harry Kane I know you're a huge Ollie Watkins fan but Ollie is Ollie is 30, obviously different player to Harry Kane, Ivan Toney is in Saudi, he's moving on De Lapp hasn't trained on.

13:06Greenwood is, for very obvious reasons, never going to be considered by his country again. And, you know, the Doms, you know, have got issues with injuries. You're just making me feel worse. I know, but sorry, but this is why...

13:20Henry:That's a succession issue, isn't it? Well, absolutely. And that's an issue that the FA will have to look into and where are we going to get the number? No, it's worse than looking to, H. It's worse than looking to. It's squarely one of the inevitable consequences of that short-term performance-related let's-go-win-the-World Cup decision. I've always said before I came into football, the compensation plans are very blunt instruments. They produce very, very clear effects. and Thomas's brief was to win this World Cup, not to plan long-term for England's succession. It just wasn't. It never would be when you set the system up that way.

14:09Henry:Now, I'm not saying that that wasn't a reasonable trade-off, but it is one of the consequences of that very, very short-term, give it a name, hired gun appointment, that you're not going to get somebody who's going to be focused on what the England team looks like in four years. So yeah, there are question marks about succession, particularly with Harry. And there is the obvious sense that is the team going to get better or worse. But let's be frank, some really good young players weren't brought to the tournament. I'm coming back to my essential message that I would have wanted to have with a manager of this calibre at this point in the road, win or lose, a proper grown-up conversation of equals, reviewing all aspects of his tenure to date.

15:02Henry:Ultimately, performances at the World Cup and results. So results, semifinal out. You may be right. It might just about be par, okay? But it's one thing losing gloriously in a semifinal. I think we lost gloriously in 1990, okay? Yeah, we did, yeah. I didn't feel the same way that night, okay? Yeah, I wish Schiltz had got off the deck a bit easier, you know, but fundamentally, as a proud English guy, I felt really shit last night. I'm sorry to use that word because I didn't like the way we shouldered arms and invited them onto us. And so there's results and there's the performance around the results.

15:45Henry:and I would look at the performances in all the games because I would respectfully suggest there hasn't been too many good moments at this World Cup. You look at other teams, you look at the way Argentina played in the last 20 minutes. Let's give them one minute's credit. The way they played in the last 20 minutes when they had to go and win the game, they produced 20 minutes of attacking football that isn't all about us being, isn't all about us, okay? We didn't produce much of that ilk in this tournament, did we really i mean we knew it was going to be a street fight and we we we lost our our guard but look just take taking it away from the game here and i understand totally your anger because it's shared by the 30 million people who would have tuned in and the tens of thousands of of england fans out here who calls him out now you've been in these situations with managers you've been in the situation where you've had strong players in the dressing room would they would i mean jude I mean, he's almost becoming the sort of the voice, almost like the leader of the dressing room, certainly this powerful character in the dressing room, as we've seen on the pitch.

16:52Does he have a conversation? How does it work? Who is going to actually call Tuchel out within the FA or within the England dressing room?

17:04Henry:My fear is nobody. Yeah, my fear is nobody. My fear is that they're wearing Thomas, for better or worse, through to the Euros now. And in that situation, it's perfectly understandable that the FA will rally around Thomas and the team. And we won't really be, we certainly won't, we won't be party to what is said or goes on behind the scenes. But the character of those conversations is now one where we're supporting a key employee in whom we have invested. And yes, I'll say it, having been in this situation myself many times, you know, the board have appointed this man. And so long as he is their man, they have to support him.

17:58Henry:And that creates the unfortunate dynamic where, as I say, the ability to be a little bit more critical, a little bit more edgy in those reviews around things that manifestly didn't work or as an employer you didn't like. I think that's going to be have a very different flavor to it than it would have done if his contract had expired and the parties were meeting to talk about the way forward. And I feel regretful. And it's not being wise with hindsight. I said so at the time of the extension. I wish the context had been winning. I heard people say it's really important they nail him down because if we win, you know, all the big clubs will be in for him.

18:39Henry:What a ridiculous argument. If we win the World Cup, I don't give a damn if all the big clubs are in for him. Job done. Job done. 60 years of pain gone. Then we'll worry about who's next. So the argument we needed to nail him down in case we won didn't hold any water for me. OK, and now, look, one thing's for sure, Henry, you're alluding to this with the players. Look, fans are obviously unbelievably sad, upset, hurt, angry, your word. OK, and so is your profession, I suspect. But those key stakeholders, the players, I think a little bit of the magic has been has been eroded by the way in which this crucial game, The first game against a serious opponent, a game where we were 20 minutes away from a World Cup final, the sense that the defeat was somewhat self-inflicted.

19:33Take me into the boardroom. How do you rebuild the credibility of a wounded manager?

19:37Henry:Yeah, that's a very interesting dilemma for the FA because finding the right balance between candor, frankness, honesty and realism and unconditional support is never easy. easy. I fear we will see more of the unconditional support vibe and we'll have lots of truisms, you know, lessons will be learned. You know, I've only been doing this for a period of time. I'm getting better at managing in the international game. And I'm sure we've learned lots of lessons and we'll take that to the next level. All that stuff is going to be coming out in the next weeks and months and that's fine that's absolutely fine but i can't help wonder whether a more objective assessment would be so far um this appointment has not been anywhere near as successful as was hoped and expected when when the appointment was made i mean my experience of the the history of post-tournament disappointments, and particularly, as you say, anger in this case, is that there is a 72-hour period where there will be headlines focusing on, because you know in the media, we focus very much on personality.

21:00Van Gaal once told me, he said, why are you English-obsessed with personality over philosophy and policy? And it was an interesting point. And just the focus and the headlines will be on his relationship with the players. I'm sure people will go back over the comments. Gabriel Clark's, the IT viewer, very experienced, respected interviewers, interview with...

21:26Henry:They should do it, don't you think? Yeah, but now, is that going to be viewed in a different light, do you think? And a lot of the focus over the next 72 hours is, you know, we're angry, the FA are putting up the shutters and hiding underneath the boardroom table. But what's the view in the dressing room? And that is going to be interesting, whether it's on pre-season tours, whether it's links from agents, whoever, because that's what people want to know. And that is the danger for the FA and the danger for Tuchel. I agree. Because people want to know what the mood of the dressing room is. And whether that was echoed in that sort of to and fro in the Tuchel, Clark, Jude sort of trilogy, as it were.

22:12Henry:I think it's really interesting you mention that. That would have been the third element of my review of Thomas Tuchel so far. You know, communications and its relationship to man management of the playing staff. There have been some serious glitches, OK, in that aspect of an elite manager's job. And the way things have panned out, it's absolutely unbelievable, isn't it? that taking on Drew Bellingham initially and being extraordinarily critical of him in a personal way at that time was absolutely an eye-catching moment that made a lot of us feel very uncomfortable. So this was a revolting comment, was it?

23:05Yes.

23:06Henry:Yeah. And that was where this started. Isn't it incredible? If we had won the World Cup, so if we'd beaten Argentina last night and then gone on and beaten Spain, and Jude would have continued his staggering trajectory in this tournament, confirming what a lot of people have known for a long time, that he is in that inner circle of the four or five leading players in the world, with Ant-Bappé, with Messi, etc. If that had happened, then you can be sure as eggs are eggs, H, that we would have been reading about Thomas's magnificent man management in giving Drew Bellingham an early slap and bringing him back into the fold with much less ego, much less it's all about me, turning him into a team player and a world-class player who's won us the World Cup.

23:54Henry:He'd have been doing victory laps on that moment. OK. And until last night, we were probably halfway along that narrative. OK. Things look fine. But we had that Clark interview moment, didn't we? And anyone watching that could have seen in Jude Bellingham's eyes that that interlude took its toll at a personal level. It feels to me as though that relationship is professional, but definitely not warm, cuddly and personal. Will that now, will that now play out? Will Jude feel the need to put his side of that story, given his stature and status in the game now? We shall see. But in total, what I'm referring to is there is a broad group of stakeholders affected by this really, really devastating way to go out of the tournament.

24:49Henry:So I just wonder when I add this all up, whether the manner of the defeat, the way things have played out, some of these issues in terms of communications, some of these issues in terms of man management, when I take all of those together, how they played, who he did and didn't bring to the tournament, how he's managed player relations, how he's handled certain aspects of communication, the whole package of being a multi-million pound elite coach. hasn't gone great. And everyone knows it hasn't gone great. And yet the employer are going to have to say, we're very, very supportive of Thomas and the team.

25:33Henry:They did their best. They tried their hardest. We did well to get to a semi, onward and upward to the next tournament. They can't say anything else. And I think most fans are going to see through that. And that is going to make it really difficult for Thomas to regain support, credibility and authority when the new season starts. That's my takeaway. Age, I mean, I'm obviously obsessed about the ability of chief executives to be able to make decisions when they have to make decisions, armed with all the information and have a pretty grown up conversation with the employer. Sitting here today, we are where we are.

26:13Henry:The guy is sitting on a contract. Is there a scenario where this spirals into much more anger and negativity and the FA say, on balance, this isn't working? Wow, that's a question. Well, I'm not sure. Could you see that? Yeah, I think it's a really good question. But isn't the credibility of Mark Bullingham and those who backed him in the first place, who backed him with this contract extension, which you rightly pointed out at the time, was naive of them, isn't their own credibility tied up with Tuchel's success? I think that is the realpolitik of these situations. It's not unique. It is always the case, really, that the chairman and boards of directors have to own key appointments.