As Thomas Tuchel is named England manager, why solving identity crisis is the only answer to a national obsession
Today at 01:21 PM
In my twenties I had a phase of choosing boyfriends in contradiction to what came before.
If one guy was a fun, party-loving extrovert he'd be replaced by a taciturn loner with a puzzle obsession. After the man who took responsibility for the trips for every friendship group came the one who could barely organise himself out of the house.
The FA seemingly endorse a similar approach in their own recruitment style. Eight years of anyone is a long time, so it's perhaps understandable Gareth Southgate's successor would be a reaction to what came before.
Thomas Tuchel is a Champions League winner, a man who has tactically outsmarted Pep Guardiola on the biggest stage, someone who fairly regularly fails when managing up and – as we have been groundbreakingly informed this week – a German.
While I was disappointed to realise some of the takes since Wednesday were not satirical, a few points of interest have surfaced. The first is the lack of a dense pool of English candidates for the top job.
Of those currently in their prime only Emma Hayes has regularly won trophies in both tournament and league. Given she is something even worse than a German, Hayes is not an option in 2024.
Comparison has been correctly drawn between the cost of Uefa licences in this country and abroad. In Spain, for instance, there are about ten times as many equivalently qualified coaches. Yes any retired top-level footballer will be easily able to pay the cost, but it is true to say that widening access widens the talent pathway.
And then there's the obvious point that reactionary appointments expose. There is no English playing style into which new coaches fit. Watch the Spanish national football team – male and female – and you know their football heritage. Not so England. That makes the choice of direction more complex and explains the range of the names on the apparent shortlist for the England senior men's coach.
Given she is something even worse than a German, Emma Hayes was not an option
The prominent placement of English assistant coach Anthony Barry on the unveiling was intended to show that this is not some destabilising operation run from the Reichstag. But the inclusion of an Englishman, excellent though he is by all accounts, doesn't prove the presence of an 'English' football thread in the national set-up.
Funnily enough, and I'm going to shock you now, someone's nationality isn't proof of their thought processes. The 'German' business is important. The world war of eight decades ago still has a grip on the English psyche.
It is the historical period I was taught most about from primary school up (in addition to, for some reason, the Tudors). Our history and that of war is important, vital even. But the reason it lives on with such bombast in the English consciousness is because of the emphasis on winning. It props up our sense of ourselves as a successful nation despite much modern evidence to the contrary.
The discourse around Tuchel suggests England's mentality so far as it can be broadly characterised is of an immature nation: desperate for praise, searching for new things to boast about and struggling with its place in the world. All the while failing to reconcile our damaged relationships with our neighbours and our – in many respects – past arrogant interactions.
Southgate managed to create a new sense of identity through the England men's team. He went some way to harnessing the folklore and failings of our time through his words, his actions and the symbolism of his relationship with his players. Tuchel is an impressive speaker too, but can he speak to an English identity?
Well, given this appointment reacts to what came before, perhaps he won't – and can't – take on that remit. If he can lead this group of players to silverware, no one's complaining. But perhaps just in the act of being German, a nationality that took a responsible approach to their own history, he can help us have the conversations that need having about this obsession.
In the national game, we need some stability while we find a style. Since the Rugby Football Union, among others, takes the same cyclical approach to recruitment as the FA, maybe the English style today is to ring the changes regularly. Even I gave up on that by my thirties. Time to grow up, England.
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