England are preparing to face Andorra and Serbia in World Cup qualifiers and manager Thomas Tuchel is demanding intensity after dreadful previous performances in June
Thomas Tuchel wants to feel the love from his players every time they pull on an England shirt.
Tuchel has spent this week talking to the squad about brotherhood, family and pulling in the same direction ahead of their World Cup qualifiers against Andorra and Serbia.
Three Lions boss Tuchel admits the last get-together in June was an anti-climax when some players struggled to “restart their engines” as England laboured to a narrow 1-0 away win at Andorra and then got thumped 3-1 by Senegal.
It was a wake-up call for Tuchel who admitted he wanted to “spice up” his squad this time, make it more competitive and deliver a clear warning that no-one can take their place for granted.
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Tuchel said: “It comes down again to does the group have the right energy together, is the group happy to be with each other, is the group happy to go and get going, does the group love to play for England or do they just like to play for England.
“This will have a huge impact and we are just ready to be well aware of that. It was always intense but I think it comes with clarity: we told the players where they compete, we told them the formation that we’re going to play in these two matches.
“Once you have clarity, intensity will rise and follow. We’ve seen the level in training as very high. We’ve had excellent days, it was a pleasure to be around the guys. Now we have to prove it. It’s the same messages as the first camps with the added component of competition. How we want to be together, how we want to act.
“It’s the principles of the game, very straightforward. We train how we want to play. Tomorrow we have a repetition of that and hopefully we can make a step forward.”
Tuchel’s predecessor Gareth Southgate made it his mission in his reign to ensure players wanted to play for England because it had become a chore under previous managers. But as England got better and started to reach the business end of World Cups and European Championships, suddenly players bought into it again and wanted to be involved.
Tuchel has inherited a good squad with big expectations and it started well enough until June presented a major bump in the road and it felt like England were going back in time. They laboured to a 1-0 win over Andorra and then got ripped apart by Senegal at the City Ground when most of the squad looked as if they were already on the beach.
Tuchel admitted he actually got that camp all wrong by getting them to report up too early – including a trip to the Barcelona Grand Prix – and extended the season for a lot of players.
“We had the intensity on the training pitch before Andorra but we could not translate it,” admitted Tuchel. “We meant good, we had a good week and we started with Formula One for a bit of bonding and experience and then we had a very long week, starting on Monday on the training pitch until Saturday.
“It felt a bit long after a long season so the first learning for this time was we brought the players in on Tuesday. The intensity that I speak about on the pitch is when we lose the ball, and we will have a lot of the ball and sometimes it’s difficult to speed the game up against 5-5-0 or 5-4-1 but in the moment of ball loss we need to show more hunger and determination in counter-pressing.
“This is the moment where you can show intensity and bring energy and be more hungry to win balls and go after them. We need to find the right team, the right team-mates who are good with each other. So far this camp has been excellent and I hope we can prove it.”
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