Thomas Tuchel Faces England's World Cup Ghosts Ahead of Nations League

Thomas Tuchel says 99.9% of England fans he meets want to talk about the good bits. Mexico. Democratic Republic of the Congo. The bronze medal against France. Not the collapse against Argentina.

He should probably listen harder to the 0.1%.

Because outside his bubble, the mood is nowhere near as forgiving. The semi-final in Atlanta still stings. England 1-0 up, seemingly in control, then slowly dragged backwards, line by line, until they were camped in a desperate 5-4-1 and picked off. For a lot of supporters, that is the defining image of Tuchel’s England so far, not the wild 6-4 win over France three days later.

Tuchel wants to move on. England won’t let him.

At Wembley on Friday, Tuchel tried to draw a line under it all as he named his first squad since the World Cup, for Nations League games against Spain, Czechia and Croatia. He joked about the Football Association hierarchy ribbing him over his defensive substitutions against Argentina, then switched tone and insisted the story should be about the France game, about six goals, about the chaos he says he wants to “embrace”.

But the squad he has picked cannot be separated from what happened in Qatar and in Atlanta. Every omission, every recall, is a verdict on his own World Cup choices.

Noni Madueke, Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney are out from the 26 who went to the tournament. Tuchel said his instinct was to keep continuity, to reward the group that reached the last four. Injuries ripped that plan up. Dean Henderson, Dan Burn, John Stones, Reece James, Djed Spence and Jordan Henderson are all unavailable, forcing change and, with it, a sliver of renewal.

Into that space step new and returning faces, and the most eye-catching of them all is Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Trent back in from the cold – but is he really trusted?

Tuchel has hauled Alexander-Arnold out of international exile after more than a year in the wilderness. The Real Madrid defender had not been called up since June 2025. His recall is intriguing. It is also awkward.

Why now? Does Tuchel genuinely trust him? Or is this simply what happens when Spence, James and even Ben White are all missing?

Alexander-Arnold has been in and out under José Mourinho in Madrid and has never nailed down a role with England. Tuchel has already closed off one avenue by making clear he does not see the 27-year-old as a midfielder. That leaves him fighting for a right-back slot in a system that has not always looked built for his gifts.

For the player, the task is brutally simple: do enough in this camp to still be here in November. Tuchel’s message to all the new and returning faces was blunt. A call-up is only the start. Perform, or disappear.

The World Cup ghosts in midfield

Tuchel insists he has not lost sleep over his World Cup squad. He talks about bottling the brotherhood, the togetherness. But the technical and tactical cracks are obvious, and he knows it.

There was a telling pause when a reporter linked the selections of Alexander-Arnold, Alex Scott and Cole Palmer to a lack of forward passers in Qatar. The question cut close to a sore point: Tuchel’s own claim after the Argentina defeat that ball possession is not part of England’s “DNA”.

After he took the job, he spoke about harnessing the pace and power of the Premier League. At the tournament, England only truly hit that gear for one spell – the second half of their opening win over Croatia. The rest of the time they leaned on solid defending and flashes of brilliance from Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham.

They ended up in a tactical no man’s land: not slick enough to play like Spain, not wild enough to unleash full Premier League chaos. Tuchel says he wants more balance now, the ability to rest with the ball, then suddenly turn up the tempo. But when push came to shove against Argentina, his own selections left him with nowhere to go.

Declan Rice was flagging. Elliot Anderson needed help alongside him. Jordan Henderson, 36 and playing with a broken wrist, was never going to be the answer. Kobbie Mainoo, picked for his agility in tight spaces, stayed rooted to the bench. Tuchel has admitted he must look at the Manchester United midfielder properly this time. That is an understatement. It was an oversight that cost England control when they needed it most.

There were options he ignored. Myles Lewis-Skelly finished the season strongly in Arsenal’s midfield. Scott was excellent for Bournemouth. Both are in this squad now. Adam Wharton, though, remains on the outside looking in.

Big calls, fine margins

There will always be arguments at the edges of an England squad. Morgan Gibbs-White and Josh King can feel aggrieved. Liam Delap has a case to be ahead of Dominic Calvert-Lewin as Kane’s understudy.

But strip away the noise and this is a strong group. Quality across the pitch. Enough youth to change the mood.

Rio Ngumoha, Liverpool’s teenage winger, carries that sense of something new, something raw. Jarrad Branthwaite arrives as the apparent heir to Burn on the left side of central defence, nudging Levi Colwill aside. Lewis Hall has a chance to force his way into the long-term picture at left-back.

Up front, the omission of Madueke in favour of Palmer says plenty about Tuchel’s shift in thinking. At the World Cup, he often picked like-for-like replacements, preserving structure but sacrificing unpredictability. Palmer is different. Chelsea’s No 10 does not run in straight lines, does not hug the touchline and repeat the same pattern. He drifts, he links, he sees passes others miss. He is, quite simply, a better all-round footballer than Madueke.

England have technicians. They have players who can look after the ball, who can thread it through tight spaces instead of simply running into them. What they do not have, yet, is a head coach who has proved he can knit all of that into a coherent, fearless plan on the biggest nights.

That is the challenge now.

Next Saturday, Spain come to Wembley to open England’s Nations League campaign. Tuchel can talk about 99.9% all he likes. When the teams walk out, when the first pass goes astray or the first substitution board goes up, far more than 0.1% of supporters will be watching, asking the same thing.

Has he really learned from Argentina? Or is the chaos he craves about to swallow him whole?