Tuchel’s England? Maybe they are just not as good as we would like them to be | Barney Ronay

Maybe we’re just not that into us. There are times when trying to rationalise the makeup, reach and ultimate capacities of the England football team can feel a bit like living inside the frantically hyper-formalised New York dating scene of the 1990s.

Here we go again. Picking over the details. Hung up on what-ifs. Arguing about The Rules of the Game. Don’t be too available. Never text first. Do wear a wizard hat. Learn magic tricks. And be rude to people. Also, be endlessly mysterious. No, more mysterious than that. Seriously, where do you get off not having enough mystery?

Sport does this all the time, and football most of all. The hard details of final scores and tournament outcomes happen. And in response we scroll back furiously through the choices, vibes and personnel that got us there, convinced there is an answer simply waiting to reveal itself, like the windsurfing dog inside a magic eye picture.

Do we need a winter break? Do we need to unleash Jack Grealish? What if Lee Carsley plays all the No 10s? Meanwhile Samantha over here is convinced we need to stretch defences by starting Ollie Watkins, and also talk a lot about intimate physical acts over a mojito brunch.

In the end most things come down to Occam’s razor, or the simplest version. The endgame to the dating rules of the 1990s was Maybe He’s Not That Into You, a book so successful it also became a film, based around the single groundbreaking idea that perhaps this bloke you’re creating a sheen of mystery around while fiercely regulating your texting schedule just doesn’t like you that much.

A gamechanging listicle about the England football team at major tournaments might reach very similar conclusions. Maybe it doesn’t actually help to agonise over managers and selections, to blame the messaging, the hotel selection, the tattoo choices. Maybe they’re just not as good we want them to be. Maybe they’re always not quite good enough.

The current team tells its own story. If England were to start the World Cup tomorrow, the fit and in-form starting XI would be something close to: Jordan Pickford; Tino Livramento, Marc Guéhi, Ezri Konsa, Nico O’Reilly; Declan Rice, Elliot Anderson; Bukayo Saka, Morgan Rogers, Marcus Rashford; Harry Kane. Is this a tournament-winning team? Or just a pretty good one?

The current fit centre-backs are excellent footballers, but none of them have actually won a league or European title. O’Reilly is super talented but it’s also not fair to ask him to defend for 90 minutes against Kylian Mbappé. The midfield double-pivot does not contain a career holding player. The debate around Kane’s understudy is fast boiling down to: are they actually worthy of a hotel room, or do we just bin it and not have a backup at all?

The reality is the current squad is pretty flat. The best England players are still Kane, Rice, Reece James and John Stones, who, if fit, could still provide a massive uplift to the back four. No fresh A-listers have emerged since the last World Cup. Saka looks tired, and also tired in a tactical sense, limited in his variations.

Zoom out and none of this is controversial. England have played one good team under Thomas Tuchel – Senegal – and lost, at home. Since the start of 2024 they’ve played four teams in the Fifa top 10; beat the Netherlands, lost to Spain and Brazil and drawn with Belgium. Someone has to be the fifth best team. Maybe this is their level. Maybe they’re not that good.

But wait. What if we find the perfect outfit? But even that looks different when you put it on. Danny Welbeck should be in the squad on merit, but this is hardly a gamechanger. Trent Alexander-Arnold should also be in the squad. There’s no way his defending is so much worse than Djed Spence’s defending it should rule out the total package. But his good form also adds up to three assists and no goals this season. Is it worth trying really hard to fit this creative maverick into a chop-and-change team?

Number 10 is the most telling position, and the space around which the idea England have a golden hand of talent tends to coalesce. Do they really? Phil Foden has two goals in 45 games. Rogers is a really good footballer but is he striking fear into the hearts of the elite? Even England’s only obviously top-level player, Kane, often seems to congeal at tournaments and find himself pilloried for not being perfect.

Where does this confusion over England’s levels come from? Undoubtedly there is a degree of unearned exceptionalism, the notion that England should always be good, that even when England are only quite good this should be enough, because they’re England Good. The Premier League hype train doesn’t help. Being on a stage full of stars doesn’t make you one.

Against Uruguay England had four starters who are second choice at their clubs, and four in total who may end up getting relegated. Compare this to the very best. France have 12 players still in the Champions League. Spain have an endless roster of technicians, all playing basically the same style for their clubs. So what are the green shoots? There are still major opportunities in this England team. Jude Bellingham has a maximum of 14 games left this season, Cole Palmer 11. Both still have time to become the key individual in attack.

Palmer is the more interesting figure, and the real lost boy in this setup. Poor form or not, he is the only high-grade, creatively unpredictable player available to Tuchel. He loves the ball and plays well against good teams. In another timeline the Palmer of the Euro 2024 final and the Club World Cup would have become the central figure in this team.

The real opportunity comes in scaling back expectations. For a start, the manager is clearly not the problem. Tuchel was an odd hire given he’s not actually a tournament specialist and came with zero international experience. But he gets the English. He even looks like a non-weird minor royal cousin; the ears, the hairline, the bones, the country-house smart-casual. He is also facing the same old problems, above all the basic lack of a template to follow. There still isn’t an English style of football, not really, just a hodgepodge of borrowings and an Football Association pathway ChatGPT’d out of what was going on in Europe at the turn of the decade.

Tuchel has talked hopefully about an assertive Premier League style, and maybe this is the English way, but not if you’ve watched much of the league this season. The players are good but not that good, the best ones not numerous enough and vulnerable to injury.

Wind back through the choices, the bad luck, the rage, and it always comes down in the end to basic talent and to the key relationship between England and the ball. Do they like it? Does the ball like them? But there is still time to nail together a functioning version of this. To find, if not 11 Mr Rights, then 11 Mr Right Nows. And to end up in New York City in July wondering aloud if this might finally be the real thing.