At the very least, there is a clear gain in time. And perhaps a more exclusive focus on the squad, something that not so long ago, within the England national team, was harder to maintain. Thomas Tuchel is coming across as a pure coach, almost stripped down in his role – ask Harry Maguire, left out of the squad without much ceremony. A clear break from the all-purpose figure Gareth Southgate embodied as his predecessor: a sign of the times, but also a rupture with the past England hope will prove productive at the most important appointment of all. Breaking a taboo that has now lasted sixty years.
The differences between the two eras are largely structural. Sir Gareth Southgate is not simply the coach who brought England back onto the global football map – two European Championship finals and a World Cup semi-final – after years on the margins. He is also a figure closely bound to the country’s footballing fate: ever since that decisive penalty missed at Wembley in ’96, in the final against Germany, he never really left the national team environment, even after moving into management. First with the Under-21s, then with the senior side, shaping an attempt to repair England’s reputation in full. As The Athletic notes in this article, “his was a vocation, something greater” than the role of a national team coach. Southgate ended up overseeing everything around the squad, well beyond training.
Tuchel, by contrast, is pragmatic. And openly so. He has been careful to acknowledge that without the work done by Southgate it would not even have been possible for him to tell his players the aim is to “put a second star on the shirt”. Once that benchmark was set, he stayed within his remit. As if England were simply another top club – something Southgate would likely dispute. “I had no idea how this job would make me feel: I just wanted to stay close to the orbit of the Premier League,” Tuchel said in recent months.
The former Chelsea and PSG coach made it clear from the outset: he would be a head coach, not a manager. “The best chances come from keeping attention on the simple act of playing football. I can probably lean on the fact I’m not English, and that I don’t speak about everything that happens in this country, with due respect. It helps me and the players stay focused.” It is not just terminology. It reflects a shift already visible at club level in England. A decade ago, Premier League benches were defined by figures who extended their control across football operations, transfers, structure: Ferguson, Wenger. Today, the model has shifted towards head coaches working alongside sporting directors, a role that in English football is still relatively recent.
In this context, the FA’s decision to appoint Tuchel feels almost procedural. Players are used to this structure, and the symbolic weight of the England shirt has at times added more pressure than clarity. In Tuchel’s view, the teams that came closest under Southgate ultimately fell short because they were overtaken by the fear of losing. Caught between caution and fatalism, they failed to impose themselves when it mattered. Bellingham and his teammates are expected to reset from there, with greater aggression, including physically, conditions permitting at a World Cup in the United States that will test that intent in every sense. Tuchel, as ever, has been thinking in those terms for months.