There was no English representative at the only previous World Cup finals in the United States save Roy Hodgson, Jack Charlton and to varying degrees the English-born members of the Ireland squad who had embraced their Irishness. What might a US World Cup be like for England 32 years on?
Roy Keane’s first volume of memoirs chronicle an Irish team of mainly Premier League players fumbling their way through that 1994 tournament played in intense heat. One should bear in mind that Keane was no fan of Charlton, considering him short on detail and unwilling to play anything but the most basic football despite some excellent players at his disposal. Keane was right. Paul McGrath, Denis Irwin, Andy Townsend, Ray Houghton, John Sheridan and the young Manchester United midfielder himself: they could all play. Keane was even less complimentary about Charlton’s assistant Maurice Setters who would often run the players into the ground in training, under a blazing sun.
“We played some good passing football in between bouts of serious defending,” Keane recalled. “We’d throw out the game plan and do what came naturally to most of us … the way we would for our clubs.” They caught Italy on a bad day and won. Against Mexico the Charlton plan was a disaster. “They passed the ball, we ran,” Keane said. “The temperature was 110 degrees. Our legs were gone.” Charlton persisted with his plan in the Florida heat against a Netherlands team for whom possession was second nature. Ireland went out.
‘We will try to increase rhythm’
Qualification permitting, the same question asks itself anew of Thomas Tuchel. What are England going to be? In the Premier League, the Pep Guardiola playbook of suffocating possession feels like it is being overthrown. Chelsea’s support is sceptical about Enzo Maresca’s version of the same style. Arne Slot has refined champions-elect Liverpool who now can play at a pace other than frantic. Yet their success, like that of Nottingham Forest this season, has come from being direct. At a World Cup played in severe heat, that challenge is different again.
The Football Association says it will have a new lightweight shirt for World Cup 2026, which is a lovely idea but unlikely to solve every problem for games in the US, Mexico and Canada. The squad that played in Mexico in 1970 had something similar, and there was lighter material for the Umbro version in 1986 but when it came to chasing Diego Maradona around the pitch at the Azteca Stadium there was a limit to the shirt’s effect.
Tuchel has spoken this week about winning with style. He has talked about winning ugly. He has discussed “reflecting” the Premier League in England’s approach. “We will try to increase our rhythm in the game,” he said, “increase the intensity in our game.”
Early days yet, of course, but against Albania, in his long-awaited first game, having passed on the two November friendlies that came after his appointment, England looked like they always do against unambitious low-quality opposition. Eventually, the greater quality told in moments, but England have never had a successful style upon which to fall back. No notion of what works for the team outside the native territory of its own league football. Unless you count one summer 60 years ago.
Tuchel has also chosen to be uncomplimentary about a predecessor who took England to two finals and a semi-final, and whom the Football Association would gladly have kept for a fifth tournament. Of course, Tuchel is entitled to say what he thinks about Sir Gareth Southgate and no doubt it went down well with the choleric phone-in crowd. Although it is notable it came in the same week Southgate said that the best thing he could do for his successor was to say nothing at all. The one thing Tuchel has not really said clearly is how he would like England to play.
What Southgate tried to do was approach tournaments without the astonishing naivety of many England teams of the past, who had tended to treat them like an extension of the English domestic season. Knackered and over-trained. Bored and lacking in detail. Injured players selected on a wing and a prayer. All these were part of the England approach. Southgate eliminated them. He may not have established an idea of football in the way that the great Spain generation did and to a certain extent Germany in the mid-part of the last decade. But he worked hard at finessing all the details. A defensive structure. A capacity to keep the ball in hot conditions. Good penalties. Southgate planed away a lot of the old English daftness and the results were surprisingly good.
It was a slow process
That was Southgate’s contribution to the England story and it got the team a long way, although not quite over the line. Southgate brought to bear years of experience as an England tournament player and then an FA insider. It was a slow process: improved junior teams, better friendly opposition, slicker organisation. That was before you got to all the more ephemeral stuff: legacy numbers, better relations with the media, a sense of what the England team meant. It worked well until finally it ran out of steam.
Tuchel has positioned himself as the turnaround expert. He has given the Southgate era a good kicking. He even had a grumble at his players post-Albania. But eventually he will have to declare for a style and an approach that goes beyond bringing Jordan Henderson out of storage and all this business about putting another star on the shirt.
The last World Cup in the United States came at a low point in the English game – to the extent the team never even made it there. But those who did, those who had an affiliation with the English game, can testify that – as with any World Cup played in the summer – it needs a manager with a good idea to succeed.
