For Thomas Tuchel, the fundamentals will never change, the ones that he outlined when he breezed into the England job on a one-man wave of positivity and excitement. The head coach regards it as essential that his team play with the passion of the Premier League; as a band of brothers, high-fiving, encouraging, selfless.
It is about energy and intensity; after a ball loss, for example. Tracking back. They must enjoy the freedom to express themselves. Harry Kane can drop off a bit from the No 9 position but not too much. There needs to be speed around him, space and incisive patterns throughout.
“It is our job to make it quickly understandable, to make it easier to transform it on to the pitch,” Tuchel said when he named his first squad in March for the opening World Cup qualifiers against Albania and Latvia at Wembley.
It is probably fair to say that a few things got lost along the way last season, especially in the second camp in June, which featured the stodgy and unenjoyable 1-0 win against Andorra in Barcelona and the 3-1 loss to Senegal at the City Ground. Albania and Latvia had been seen off with relative comfort although the performances did not set pulses racing.
It has hardly been a false start under Tuchel. Three wins out of three in qualification, with no goals conceded, is not to be sniffed at, while Senegal was a friendly. June is always an awkward window. But something does need to change as Tuchel embarks on what he has suggested is the real business, the beginning of a World Cup season.
He knows it, just as he claims to have detected a different atmosphere among the players this week as they prepare for Saturday’s return tie against Andorra at Villa Park. The big one against Serbia in Belgrade comes on Tuesday. Tuchel believes he has the answers. He wants to show he is a fast learner in a new environment and for him it comes down to streamlining, greater precision and clarity.
Tuchel used 28 players in his first four games and had a clutch of others as unused substitutes; he even had to omit players from matchday squads. Which he hated. It did not create “the right energy”. He had to cast his net at the outset but it was too crowded. And so this time he trimmed the selection long-list and called up only 24 players. He feels the competition has become spicier.
In the warm weather training week in Barcelona before the Andorra game, which began with a team bonding trip to the Spanish Grand Prix on the Sunday, Tuchel put his players through their paces on the Monday. There was intensity then but the week came to feel long before the game on Saturday. This time, Tuchel asked the players to report on Tuesday.
The most interesting change has been in Tuchel’s approach to training: the tactical side. Few coaches are as obsessed with the finer details but he appears to have concluded that less could be more in international football.
“You don’t have the players on a daily basis where you can really tweak into the details,” Tuchel said. “We want to be more clear, more easy, because we have so many players from different clubs so they’re used to a different style. If we implement a lot of new things in only four days of training, it’s just not enough time.
“So we need to find an idea where everyone can buy in quickly and everyone drops their club heads. It’s more about principles and building it from a structure that everyone can understand. This is where I have to adapt.
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“I tried to give solutions in the first two camps through the structure. We played different structures in the buildup and put players in new positions. Maybe I underestimated the effect that it has. It was a learning. Maybe we translated it a little too much from club football and we need to take a step back to speed up our game with a bit more freedom and less changes within the structure. Maybe the solution comes from running more, from more energy, than the structure.”
Tuchel has pretty much picked two players per position and he has been gloriously specific about where he sees each one playing, who they are up against. For example, Tino Livramento has been picked at right-back, in competition with Reece James; Djed Spence as a left-back against Myles Lewis-Skelly. At left centre-back, it is Dan Burn and Marc Guéhi. The No 8s are Declan Rice and Elliot Anderson. There is flexibility and Tuchel said John Stones might have played in the No 6 role had he not been forced to withdraw with a muscle injury. But not too much flexibility.
It is the same story with the formation. Tuchel said a back five could be an option but not for this camp or those that follow in October and November. He is thinking about 4-2-3-1.
“This is where the focus is at the moment,” he said. “We have these three camps now and it’s not very likely that we will change [to three centre-backs] in these camps. But then we have March and it’s not so hard to learn to play in a back five. We told the players where they compete. We told them the formation that we’re going to play in these two matches. Once you have clarity, intensity will rise and follow.”
Tuchel is braced to run into low-block defences against Andorra and Serbia; they have long been a spectacle killing curse for England in qualifying ties. “It’s like chewing gum,” Tuchel said of the monotony of trying to find a way through.
It will be about attitude. “Does the group love to play for England or do they just like to play for England?” Tuchel said. More than that, it will be about showing signs of an identity. It is time for solutions.
