AB will have watched and have seen and heard TT doubling down defending his tactics.
What do fans know about football at best they’ve managed under 14 kids teams.
To be fair, I think there is some truth in what Tuchel said. The retreat to defending like the Alamo has happened under more than one manager, so while I don’t think Tuchel helped with those subs and found little success in pushing them up, I think mentality needs to change. It’s like our players are geared to thinking “now to see it out” at 1-0 and I think this has been instilled by more than Tuchel. To learn from this, the FA needs to look at how to coach this out of them during the youth level and maybe, in time, we can go to the next step.
The positives are that we can now regularly make it far in tournaments, so something is going right, and we can say we are among the best in the world (if not quite yet the best). It’s not like the overhyped 20 year ago team, we are a force to be reckoned with and proved that for 60 minutes against Argentina.
During the end of Sotuhgate’s reign, the Southgate fans were saying the players weren’t good enough and we could only go far because of him, while Southgate’s detractors said the players were the best and his tactics let us down. I think the reality is in between. We do have good players and a good squad, but not quite the best, so they deserve respect while recognition that we need to change something to go that one better.
