Big picture: Tuchel is blamed for England’s exit but it’s not just about him | Thomas Tuchel

“I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so bad.”

As England’s World Cup hopes recede into yet another heartbreak, brought down in Atlanta by Mr Right, the latest-looking, sad, not-so-intelligent, sun-burnt, Jägerbomb ice cream-eating-a-bathtub, this is as good a time as any to seek solace in a New York romcom. Meg Ryan was right. Don’t be sad that it’s over. He is incredibly angry and frustrated on the radio that it happened at all.

The World Cup will now reconvene in New York to tie the final knot, which is taking a shortcut in the end. As for England, it will take some time before anyone feels like going back there. There should be a period of shock, process, rebuke. There should be time to spell out that it’s not us: it’s you, Thomas.

Drinking too much emotion from England’s exit from the Championship, which, for all its frustration, is still very much like every other exit, it’s tempting to pause before blaming the manager outright. So here we go. It’s another story of questionable choices and a team that faltered on the big stage. Have you ever heard of a man who likes to complain that all his wives have the same file, they just can’t find him, and that goes to all 17?

What’s with all these Mr Wrongs? Remember the last one? Open the letters about the meaning of marmalade. A bad choice and the group waned on the big stage. Thank God we fired him, eh? Remember the one before that? Ray Lewington must see Paris. A bad choice and the group waned on the big stage. Before that? Angry, dumb, foreign. A bad choice and the group waned on the big stage. Before that? Umbrella stuff. A bad choice, the group was reduced to the main stage. Before that? Chilly Nordic sex maniac. Bad choice. The group dwindled. The main stage. Stop running. How unlucky can you be?

But two things can also be true. The team felt strangely lopsided and booming throughout the tournament. Tuchel is paid handsomely to manage these moments. And he undeniably balls this up, with a great chance of doing the opposite.

When Tuchel appeared after the game deep in the sub-tiers of the Atlanta Stadium he seemed to have become thinner and more rebellious, he had become a skull, a depressed skull with a good taste in decorated men’s clothes, above when he spoke freely about the need to maintain a tactical vision, to clearly answer what he was saying, and how he was speaking. – if you lose every decision you made is wrong, and everything else you didn’t make is right.

On the other hand it is now facing the time of pikes. Everyone loves a bottle. And that’s what we got here. What is the cost list? Especially the period of 72-92 minutes in Atlanta, when suddenly the whole world of England became a defense, fear, terror-ball, running away from the blow. It was in the 72nd minute that Tuchel responded that his team had lost everything, the likes or the threat of an attacking team by going to the back five.

After 82 minutes, England had six defenders on the field. The talk of strength, balls, guts, fearlessness had all evaporated, replaced by an attempt to break through. This was poor judgment. It worked against Norway and Mexico, a little. But none of those teams have a top speed player who will kill you for fun if you don’t pressure him, if you give him a comfortable air pocket.

This was killing your boots a little. It was sitting on your knees. This was always the case. And this was not to be.

So Tuchel is about to be re-elected in his team’s selection, which is easy and allows even an unproven history. In fact the group was very successful. England beat the hosts and reached the semi finals. The fringe players looked happy and energetic. The things that Tuchel did not do well against Argentina in the past he did well. People are crazy sometimes. Your father tricks won’t always fix you. Tuchel was aiming for 8 here overall, dropped to seventh in Atlanta, and had four in that game alone.

At that time it is necessary to look at that wider picture, to look away from the idea of ​​a magic man, a savior. “Maybe the happy ending doesn’t include the guy. Maybe it’s you, the only one picking up the pieces and starting over”. Not my words. Names, famously, for a romcom He’s Just Not That Into Youand a great reminder that often the deepest answer is close to home. Tuchel has failed to beat Argentina yet. Broadly you fail to beat England, or rather the idea, the abstract of England, which is always present in all games, your most feared enemy, in all the most decorated and abused variants, its heavy, heavy spirit.

The real event here was not the 72-92 minutes. It’s something Tuchel failed to respond to at the time, a key event in Atlanta, the full display of England’s players on the pitch after taking the lead 17 minutes earlier. At that time England panicked, fell deep, held on, saw the whole month, felt the visible line, the victory against Argentina, and was reduced to it.

Tuchel’s failure was not a failure to foresee this. His speech (translation: controlled explanation of mistakes) after the Norway game looks more informed now. He saw this coming. There was nothing he could do to stop it. So England lost as they always do at this stage. It failed again. It failed in the same way.

All of a sudden, England were being harassed, pushed back, feeling the full force of Messi’s personality, taking corners with 20 minutes left to play. Tuchel did not want this. He urged them to move forward from the fence. Harry Kane disappeared. His timing wasn’t exactly bad here. It just wasn’t there. Tuchel tried to straighten things out, went into overdrive at half-time, iPad out, down on the pitch waving his arms in a display of intellectual power.

Knockout games are often decided by those fragile, unorganized moments of the night, when the ability to control the tempo and the ball, the ability of high-quality midfielders to control themselves becomes a team’s greatest asset. And the England midfielder still lacks the craft-based ability to win strong play-off games. They lost like this in Croatia in 2018, where Luka Modric recently took over the game. They lost like this in Italy in 2021, when the ball just disappeared slowly in that calm blue cloud. International football rewards cross-cultural communication, level of intelligence and awareness of the game, off-the-cuff intelligence. And the fact that England doesn’t produce a top class midfielder whose game is purely artistic and intellectual.

And this is the real point here. Tuchel may have failed to reverse the engineer’s fix, adding a gloss from above to the culture of unplanned development. But maybe this is a stupid idea in the first place. England tried to game the system, find a cheat code, buy a very expensive team manager, an outside specialist.

The Football Association system didn’t really make sense. Eighteen months to fix everything, and to start late again because this saves a little money. This, right here, is the culture of cutting, bodge operations, confusion, lack of game intelligence, which has just been exposed in the upper class.

You can’t make a custom. There is no real English gameplay. There’s a Premier League way, sort of. But what is that? The league is a global, rootless, profit-driven, cannibalized talent pool, where very few of the key players in the top teams are domestic products.

What does it mean for England to win the World Cup? What message would it convey? How do you win the World Cup? Don’t neglect your training culture. Don’t produce managers. Create academy players who are short-achieving but don’t really have a consistent style, the way Thierry Henry described the Spanish development program. Then you put the highest paid club manager on top and hope it all makes sense when the pips are ringing and the smart level player is asking what exactly are you doing?

Tuchel’s mistakes in defeat can be picked out, replayed, dissected. But you are also part of a much wider process, a choice made, a turn taken over many decades. England are much better and more united as a team. A lot of effort has gone into bridging that gap. It has decreased. But this is still England, it’s still true to itself, it’s still one car crash.