Why Thomas Tuchel got it all wrong by picking Aston Villa & Manchester City players for England

A penny – perhaps even a little more – for the thoughts of every England fan who lost faith in Gareth Southgate. Thomas Tuchel, a highly-decorated and unquestionably competent coach, has quickly discovered that there’s a reason that his position used to be called The Impossible Job.

On one level, Tuesday evening’s 3-1 defeat to Senegal doesn’t really matter all that much. There are no consequences for losing a friendly, and the anaemia of England’s performance against Andorra over the weekend doesn’t cost them any points on the qualifying table. But these games still provided Tuchel with a harsh lesson in the realities of international football – you can’t mess around and expect results as of right, most of your opponents are better than you think, and you can’t just play the wrong player and assume it will all pan out…

Why bringing on Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers was a mistake

On the one hand, Tuchel can clearly be forgiven for trying a few new things over the course of the past week. Opportunities for experimentation will be few and far between in the build-up to the 2026 World Cup, and the Three Lions won’t play another friendly in 2025 thanks to the ever-bustling schedule.

Still, when he brought on Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers for Harry Kane in the second half with the game still finely balanced at 1-1, he made what quickly proved to be a clear error – not because of any deficiencies in Rogers’ game, but because of what the change did to England’s shape.

Suddenly, England didn’t have a striker on the pitch. Instead, the attack was an amorphous muddle of attacking midfielders and wingers endeavouring to carve out a role for themselves, and generally falling over each other in the process.

If Rogers and Eberechi Eze had spent any time playing in tandem during training in the build-up to the game at the City Ground, it didn’t show. Both players deferred not to the positional requirements of the game but to their instincts, simultaneously dropping into the number ten position or plying the left-hand channels at the same time, an issue compounded by the lively presence of Morgan Gibbs-White, who was trying to do exactly the same thing.

There were some lovely flicks and touches and a handful of pretty passing moves, very few of which actually went anywhere because there was nobody in the penalty area to target and nobody off the ball occupying a Senegalese defender to create some space in which to operate.

Time and again, a nice pass forward would find a very talented player in the channel, and they would have nowhere to go and nothing to do until they either tried a pot shot, an optimistic cross into space, or simply got crowded out by a defence who made few mistakes.

It all called to mind the dismal Nations League defeat to Greece in October under the short tenure of Lee Carsley – a game in which England’s stand-in manager opted to throw every attacking player he had onto the field at once and see what would happen. The answer, as it transpired, was a complete mess, lacking fundamental shape or identity.

Tuchel will learn the same lesson as his immediate predecessor. Carsley quickly reverted to a more disciplined and sensible system and beat Greece 3-0 a month later in Athens in the return fixture, and when England play their next matches – against Andorra and Serbia in World Cup qualifying in September – it’s probable that Tuchel will be a little less adventurous than he was this week.

Of course, the no-striker strategy employed for 30 minutes against Senegal wasn’t Tuchel’s only roll of the dice. After Declan Rice was substituted after 71 minutes, England also lacked a holding midfielder and lost control of a key area of the pitch and had to continue without a solid base of possession. Then there was Reece James at left-back and Curtis Jones on the opposite defensive flank against Andorra. Perhaps the results of these experiments will provide Tuchel with data he finds useful, but the consequences were arguably predictable.

If Tuchel was settling in for a long run at the England job, which seems unlikely given his emphasis on the relatively short duration of his contract with The FA, then these fliers would be more understandable, but given the nature of his position it seems unusual and perhaps unhelpful to be trying out some ideas for Plan B when he can’t even be certain that Plan A works yet. Still, parts of his Plan A seemed to have holes as well, based on what we’ve seen over the course of his four matches in charge.

England’s old guard may need to be moved on

If a few fruitless tactical decisions were the only real issue we witnessed over the course of the matches against Andorra and Senegal, there would be little to seriously complain about – but another problem is showing its face, and that’s the role of the veteran players upon which Tuchel appears determined to rely.

Kyle Walker has reached a difficult juncture in his career. Few players whose game is built on extreme pace adapt to the ageing process once that extra ‘half a yard’ has vanished (Ryan Giggs was a real rarity in that regard) and Walker has yet to prove that he’s one of them.

The Walker of old might have reached the loose ball before Ismaïla Sarr to prevent Senegal’s equaliser, but the 35-year-old edition was flat on his heels and slow to react, while offering little going forward. Jordan Henderson, now 34, was solid enough against Andorra but offered little spark and making tackles against part-time players hardly provides a glowing reference.

In justifying continued call-ups for older players, Tuchel has cited the value of their experience both on and off the pitch, but it was hard to discern their influence on the field and there is little room to carry veteran cheerleaders in a World Cup squad. There’s also the feeling that suggesting that the younger, sharper players might need a wise head around them to function at their best rather infantilises them.

Walker and Henderson don’t, as it stands, look good enough to play for England any more. That shouldn’t be said to minimise their achievements and the immense contributions they have made to the squad in years past, but they now look past their sell-by dates, at least at the very highest level of the game. As it stands, their team-mates are carrying them when Tuchel seems to hope they will lift their team-mates.

The other issue that was very evident across two wearisome matches is that the players frankly looked like they were playing at half steam. It’s always worrying watching an England side unquestionably packed with quality struggling to maintain effort and concentration levels – but it probably isn’t an issue worth lingering on, so long as it doesn’t persist into September.

It calls to mind England’s dire Nations League campaign in 2022, when they lost 4-0 to Hungary in June, the worst result and probably the worst performance of the Gareth Southgate era. As with the defeat to Senegal, it was a match that came after the end of a packed season, when the players seemed shattered by a year of exertions and in sore need of a rest and reset.

It would be nice to imagine that professional players can maintain their highest levels all year round, but they are subject to burnout just like the rest of us. This was an end-of-season performance, when too many players needed to be on the beach rather than playing for their country. Batteries need to be recharged.

Tuchel probably shouldn’t be too concerned by the performances against Andorra and Senegal on an individual level, and it’s perhaps only fair to add the same end-of-year asterisk to Walker and Henderson as well, even if the long-term stats from club level don’t offer much optimism either.

But the real worry is that Tuchel may not yet know how he wants to set his team up to play at the World Cup, isn’t finding ways to institute new ideas and methods in the short windows he will get in international management, and hasn’t got much time to work it all out before the team (hopefully) heads to the United States in a year’s time. There’s a long road ahead. Perhaps losing to Senegal will prove to be the most minor of bumps.