England boss Thomas Tuchel claimed he gave Ivan Toney more than three minutes to save the Three Lions before they were beaten by Senegal as he criticised aspects of his side’s performance
Thomas Tuchel snapped back when quizzed on his decision to hand Ivan Toney three minutes at the end of England’s loss to Senegal – claiming the striker was given longer.
The German saw his side meander to a win over Andorra at the weekend, with Harry Kane scoring the only goal, but his problems deepened as Senegal became the first African nation in history to down the Three Lions with a memorable win in Nottingham – which saw the home crowd again boo their team.
Despite opening the scoring at the City Ground England were pegged back, conceding a third deep into stoppage time. They were 2-1 down on the hour but Tuchel rang the changes, bringing off Harry Kane, yet only introducing his other striker in the final moments.
Toney has been prolific in Saudi Arabia but wasn’t used at the weekend and then only given a matter of minutes on Tuesday night. Tuchel took issue with the reference to a three-minute stint as his decisions were put under the microscope.
He told ITV: “It was more than three minutes. I think Ivan is a specialist for these situations, we created a lot of chances with Morgan Gibbs-White, Ebs [Eberechi Eze], Morgan Rogers and with Jude [Bellingham] in fluid positions. I think Ivan is the strongest when we have a lot of balls into the box, and that was the case so we got him ready at 80 minutes.”
When the camera panned to the official holding up the substitute board for Toney to come on the clock had struck 87:01 – meaning the interviewer’s question was valid. There was five minutes of added time, but that wasn’t known at that point.
Given the lack of time available Toney struggled to have any impact and instead saw Senegal break and score a third through Cheikh Sabaly. Tuchel made wholesale changes to his team for the clash on Tuesday night, but that failed to get the results he wanted.
The German said: “Yeah of course, it’s a disappointing result. Not sure if we did not deserve a little bit more result-wise. Felt a bit frozen, not active enough for a long time over the match. We defended quite well for long periods in the first half and then our best period came when we were 2-1 down. We conceded the first two goals – very easy goals, we need to defend better.
“The reaction was good after we were down. We suddenly were more active, more free, more fluent, more aggressive. We had big chances to equalise.”
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