Thomas Tuchel urges England to have hunger to win rather than fear to lose
The 51-year-old is preparing to lead the national team for the first time on Friday.
Thomas Tuchel wants to bring hunger and excitement back to England having felt Sir Gareth Southgate’s side were inhibited by a fear of failure at last summer’s European Championship.
The 51-year-old is preparing to lead the national team for the first time on Friday as the road to next summer’s shot at World Cup glory gets under way with a Wembley qualifier against Albania.
The Football Association has tasked Tuchel with getting England over the line having gone so close under Southgate, who oversaw World Cup semi-final and quarter-final appearances along with reaching back-to-back Euros finals.
But last summer’s run to the Berlin showpiece was quite underwhelming, with the new head coach telling ITV that he felt England “were more afraid to drop out of the tournament than having the excitement and hunger to win it”.
“I think it has to be the other way around,” Tuchel said when those comments were put to him at the pre-match press conference.
“I want us to play with the excitement, the hunger and the desire to win – and the joy to win and the acceptance of failure is a part of it, especially in football.
“But we want to implement this togetherness and the joy, that everyone feels safe to express themselves and give their very best and we play (in a way) that it’s recognisable.
“We play with the hunger and the joy to win and not with the fear to lose. Anything can happen in football. We know this.
“But the focus is on winning, it’s on a higher number of touches in the opponent’s box, a higher amount of attacks, a higher amount of high ball recoveries. This is where the focus is.”
Sir Alf Ramsey’s 1966 World Cup heroes remain the only men to have won a major trophy with England, leading to talk that the manager’s role is ‘the impossible job’ and that the shirt weighs heavy on players.
Tuchel made light of the latter remark, saying it is being made even lighter to deal with the North American climate but admitted it was another way of what he felt was “tension and pressure on the shoulders of the players” last summer.
The German coach wants to help reprogramme England’s players to focus on “the excitement to maybe make something special happen” rather than worry about negatives and hopes to make the first step in front of Friday’s sell-out Wembley crowd.
“I just hope so much that they can see what I see on a daily basis and they can transform it into the stadium because what I saw in the last days was amazing and was just a joy to watch and to be part of it,” Tuchel said.
“So, hopefully we can transport this energy and this fire and this hunger into the game tomorrow.
“I mean, it’s amazing. We have a full Wembley, it will be very exciting. I will be bit nervous, I guess and that’s part of it. I’m always a bit nervous before matches, so this will not be different.
“I’m excited and hopefully we can prove the point and take the first step.”
Tuchel says he has “some tough choices to make” as he has 26 players to choose against Albania but Cole Palmer will play no part in either match.
“Cole will not be with us,” he said. “He was not on the pitch with Chelsea. We waited quite a while now for feedback and for the chance maybe to call him up.
“But he is not on the pitch and not available. It makes no sense to call him up now. We stay with this group that we have.”
