England fans turn on Thomas Tuchel as 'disgraceful' Three Lions booed off
Thomas Tuchel stood on the touchline with his arms spread wide in frustration.
This felt like an all too familiar night for England as the performance was undermined by defensive mistakes, showing too much loyalty to ageing players and wasted opportunities.
Tuchel had talked about needing the players to play with smiles on their faces, to re-establish connections and understandings.
Yet no-one was smiling by the end as the fans in the City Ground shouted abuse at the England bench. 'Disgraceful' one bellowed out in Tuchel's direction. Another shouted: "Tuchel out."
It was three years ago this week that England were thumped 4-0 by Hungary at Molineux and taking the show on the road can be a risky business.
When Senegal's third goal went in deep in injury time, it turned toxic and the crowd jeered while the visitors celebrated wildly. It was painfully reminiscent of the Wolverhampton nightmare.
This was Tuchel's first defeat in his fourth game in charge and, far more worrying, realistically they were exposed by the first decent opponent they have faced after seeing off Albania, Latvia and Andorra.
Tuchel will have to learn some lessons pretty fast if he is to turn this lot into genuine contenders to win the World Cup.
Kyle Walker is 35, looks a pale shadow of his former self and his 96th cap will be remembered for him being too slow, a player in decline and one who was exposed on Senegal's leveller.
Walker has been brilliant for England but picking a player on reputation is a bad way to go. And there were way too many tired, jaded players out there who looked shot to bits.
Everyone needs a holiday but Senegal lifted themselves in a way that England could not manage even after Harry Kane - who else? - had given them an early lead.
Anthony Gordon missed a sitter to make it 2-0 and those are the small margins which can get you punished at international level.
Senegal gleefully took advantage of England's sloppiness in defence as twice they were horribly exposed in defence.
And England were denied a late leveller when Jude Bellingham had the ball in the net only for VAR to intervene and rule that the ball had hit Levi Colwill's arm.
That only compounded England's frustration. But they only had themselves to blame. Kane, the only survivor from England's starting line-up against Andorra, put them ahead after seven minutes.
Eberechi Eze, one of few England positives, did brilliantly to win the ball, Conor Gallagher set up Gordon but his shot was parried by keeper Edouard Mendy but there was Kane to tap home the rebound from close range. That is 73 goals in 107 caps.
Gordon missed his big chance and England were made to pay. The Senegal equaliser was a defensive disaster for England. Trevoh Chalobah had made a promising start to his full debut but got the wrong side of Jackson and allowed him to get to the by-line.
Even worse, Walker had switched off, gone to sleep and no longer has the lightning pace to make up distance which allowed Sarr to sneak in and fire home from close range.
That was bad. And it got worse. Walker who was booked for a late challenge on El Hadji Malick Diouf. If it was a competitive game, the card might have been red rather than yellow. But it was another sign that Walker is no longer first to the ball.
Senegal midfielder Habib Diarra missed a huge chance but then was given acres of space down the left when Myles Lewis-Skelly went AWOL and Levi Colwill was nowhere. Diarra's cross shot flew in off the inside of Henderson's leg.
It got even worse in injury time when Curtis Jones lost possession, Senegal broke free and Cheikh Sabaly raced away to score and rub salt in England's wounds.
Sky has slashed the price of its bundle ahead of the 2025/26 season, saving members £192 and offering more than 1,400 live matches across the Premier League, EFL and more.
Sky will show at least 215 live Premier League games next season, an increase of up to 100 more.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
22 minutes ago
- BBC News
Gossip: Brentford to hold on to Norgaard
Brentford will block attempts by new Tottenham manager Thomas Frank to bring midfielder Christian Norgaard with him from his former club. (Givemesport), externalThe Bees and West Ham are both interested in Rangers and Morocco striker Hamza Igamane, 22, after he scored 16 goals in the Scottish Premiership last season. (Foot Mercato - in French), externalWant more transfer stories? Read Friday's full gossip columnFollow the gossip column on BBC Sport
The Sun
24 minutes ago
- The Sun
Arsenal transfer news LIVE: Talks ‘ongoing' for Hato, Viktor Gyokeres LATEST as Gunners ‘leap ahead' Zubimendi updates
ARSENAL have a HUGE summer of business to take care of in the transfer market. Top of that agenda is a striker with Sporting's Viktor Gyokeres and RB Leipzig's Benjamin Sesko approached for the marquee move. Portuguese outlet Record are claiming the Gunners have offered Sporting Lisbon £46million for the leading Prem target. Elsewhere, the Gunners have ongoing talks for Ajax centre-half Jorrel Hato, according to reports. And we have all the latest on Martin Zubimendi with a move to North London now imminent. 12th Jun 2025, 23:15 By Ian Tuckey Gunners eye Anthony Arsenal are tipped to show serious interest in ex-Manchester United winger Anthony Elanga. The £60million-rated Swede was outstanding for Nottingham Forest this season. The 23-year-old notched six goals and 11 assists as a Premier League ever-present, helping Nuno Espirito Santo's men finish seventh. TBR Football claim Arsenal are just one of the Prem rivals keen on the pacy attacker. 12th Jun 2025, 22:51 By Ian Tuckey Defender's wages could halt Emirates exit AC Milan could come in for Arsenal left-back Oleksandr Zinchenko. Sky in Italy say the Serie A giants are preparing for the possible departure of Theo Hernandez to Atletico Madrid. Zinchenko appears way down the Gunners' pecking order - especially given the brilliant breakthrough season of Myles Lewis-Skelly. But it's reckoned the wages of ex-Manchester City ace Zinchenko could be an issue for Milan. 12th Jun 2025, 22:06 By Ian Tuckey Viktor breaks silence Viktor Gyokeres has broken his silence on his transfer fall-out with Sporting Lisbon chiefs with a brief 22-word statement, writes KATHERINE WALSH. The Man Utd and Arsenal target striker is reportedly at loggerheads with Sporting bosses after trying to force through a dream move to the Premier League. The Swede, 27, is allegedly furious with Sporting for going back on their word over a promise to lower his £84million release clause and plans not to play for the club again. He believes he had a gentleman's agreement to leave the Portuguese giants for £50million with a further £8million in add-ons, but that claim has been denied by president Frederico Varandas. The former Coventry man then reportedly threatened to go on strike while vowing not to play for the club again if they don't lower their offer. But Varandas insisted he will not be bullied into letting the Arsenal and Manchester United target move to the Prem on the cheap this summer. He said: ' Sporting will not accept blackmail and insults – you should know me better by now.' But Gyokeres has now tried to play down the squabble by writing on his Instagram story on Thursday evening: "There is a lot of talks at the moment, most of it is false. I will speak when the time is right." It also comes after reports claimed that Arsenal submitted a new bid for Gyokeres on Wednesday, with his agent Hasan Cetinkaya visiting London to fast-track the transfer. 12th Jun 2025, 21:36 By Ian Tuckey Arsenal in growing Prem queue for Catamo A Viktor Gyokeres team-mates has sneaked onto the radar of major Prem clubs. Sporting Lisbon are already fighting to keep Gyokeres away from Arsenal and Manchester United. Now it's claimed Mozambique wing-back Geny Catamo also has plenty of serious admirers. Caught Offside claim the versatile wideman has attracted interest from Arsenal, Aston Villa, Newcastle and Fulham. Sporting's main shield to a Catano exit is a release clause of 60million euros - around £51m. But it's suggest Prem teams might open with an offer of approximately half that. By Ian Tuckey Going for Bronck Former Arsenal midfielder Giovanni van Bronckhorst is set to join Arne Slot's staff at Liverpool. The 50-year-old is the leading candidate to replace Slot's right-hand man John Heitinga, who quit the Premier League champions to become manager at Ajax. Liverpool sporting director, Richard Hughes, has been keen to find a replacement ahead of pre-season and Van Bronckhorst, who has managed at Feyenoord, Rangers, and Besiktas fits the bill. Although a deal has not yet been done, Van Bronckhorst is now in talks with the owning Fenway Sports Group about forming part of a backroom team alongside Sipke Hulshoff and Aaron Briggs. The former Netherlands captain, who played for Arsenal between 2001 and 2004, is keen on a return to the Premier League, after spending the last six months working as a Uefa analyst. Van Bronckhorst has never worked with Slot and doesn't have a close relationship with him, although the pair share similar ideas around playing style and have both won the Dutch league. If a deal is completed, Van Bronckhorst would arrive at the club with a wealth of coaching experience. 12th Jun 2025, 19:46 By Ian Tuckey Gunners target Viktor blasts 'false' talk Viktor Gyokeres has issued a blunt statement after reportedly threatening to go on strike to force a move. The Sporting Lisbon striker spoke following links to Manchester United and Arsenal. It's believed both Prem clubs have now made approaches for the Swede. And it's also claimed the Gunners have bid £46million. But Sporting president Frederico Varand denied receiving ANY offers for his star man. Now Gyokeres has said on Instagram: 'There is a lot of talks at the moment, most of it is false. I will speak when the time is right.' 12th Jun 2025, 19:43 By Ian Tuckey Gunners miss out on Sane Lerone Sane has officially joined Galatasaray following the expiration of his contract with Bayern Munich. The Germany international, who was wanted by north London rivals Arsenal and Tottenham, has inked a three-year deal with the Turkish giants.
Telegraph
31 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The football club that went woke is going broke
They became famous for being the first – and still only – football club to pay their women's team the same as their men's. But almost eight years after launching their 'Equality FC' campaign, Lewes have admitted they now face a fight to stick to that landmark commitment and even 'to keep the club running' this summer. In an extraordinary appeal to their fans they have revealed they need £120,000 to get through to the start of next season after only 'just' making it to the end of this campaign, as well as warning 'the next few weeks' will shape their entire future. So how has it come to this for a club who had sought to 'put an end to the excuses for why such a deep pay disparity has persisted in our sport'? Is the plight of Equality FC a vindication of those behind the catchphrase 'go woke, go broke'? To find answers requires going back to when Lewes faced going bust after the 2008 global financial crisis. Until then, a side from the Sussex town best known as the bonfire capital of the world had barely registered on the national stage, having spent their entire existence outside the professional game since being founded in 1885. After staving off a bankruptcy petition by HM Revenue & Customs, the club were taken into fan ownership 15 years ago as a Community Benefit Society, led by six supporters – calling themselves Rooks125 – who included some well-off benefactors. Having been relegated from what is now the National League the year before the takeover, the men's team suffered two further demotions under the new regime over the subsequent six years. In stark contrast, the women's team, formed in 2002 as Lewes Ladies, was thriving on the field and made it all the way to the third tier, following the merger with the men's side in 2014. Groundbreaking equality drive But the July 2017 announcement that they would become the first club to pay their men's and women's teams equally really put Lewes on the footballing map. As well as pledging to equalise the five-figure budget of both sides, they said they would provide the same resource for coaching and other staff, upgrade equipment and facilities, and invest in local grass roots to drive participation by boys and girls. The landmark news made headlines nationwide and beyond amid an explosion of interest in the women's game driven by England's Lionesses and the Women's Super League. It also came just two years after it emerged England men's captain Wayne Rooney was earning £300,000 per week compared to the £65,000 a year netted by women's counterpart Steph Houghton. As is common with the announcement of many equality drives, there was little public scrutiny at the time about the practicality of such a policy – although it would later emerge that this had caused a split amongst Lewes' board of directors. The move appeared to pay off spectacularly for the women's team when, despite having played only regional football since being established, they were subsequently chosen to join the new Women's Championship. Any fears the men's team would suffer as a result looked unfounded when they were promoted that same season to the Isthmian League Premier Division. Sponsors and Prosecco on tap 'Equality FC' helped attract sponsors such as Kappa, Marsden and Brighton and Hove Buses as the club introduced the likes of on-tap Prosecco, turned a beach hut (their version of a corporate box) into a nail bar, held chanting practice before women's matches and staged suffragette flash mobs. Lewes also began lobbying the Football Association to provide equal prize money in the men's and women's FA Cups. Within two years, they had quadrupled average women's attendances from around 120, including a record 1,958 for a league game against Manchester United. 'I joined a football club – I'm leaving a political party' But, despite soaring revenues, it was their efforts to compete with the relative financial might of the likes of United and Tottenham Hotspur that saw the first cracks emerge in the club's commitment to 'Equality FC'. Since coming under fan control, and without sufficient supporter owners to make them self-sustaining, Lewes had been relying on hundreds of thousands of pounds of loans from directors which were then written off. Those loans began to balloon after 2017 and, in September 2019, matters came to a head when one of the men who had helped rescue the club a decade earlier quit the board. In a scathing blog post explaining why, Barry Collins said he had become 'convinced that much of the hard work I and others had put in to building the club's reputation had been needlessly squandered'. He added: 'The club has become overwhelmed by the single issue of the equality campaign. I joined a football club and feel like I'm leaving a political party. 'I had my doubts about the pay parity initiative, I still do – my side bet is it will be abandoned as impractical once either of the first teams is promoted without the other. The equality campaign has become an internal crusade that trumps all else. 'A couple of directors suggested it should be the board's 'priority' to attend a literary festival the club was running an equality event at, instead of a game at Margate on the same day. My view was that we were running a football club, not a think-tank. 'There are some board members who can't seem to accept that some people's primary motivation for being part of a football club is the football, not the club's politics. In the end, I felt it best to go, rather than risk further confrontation.' Women's professionalism simply too costly Collins is chair of the Lewes FC Supporters Club and, asked by Telegraph Sport about his resignation, he stressed he had not been 'ideologically opposed to equality' but 'ideologically opposed to spending that much money that the club doesn't have'. He admitted that one of the ironies of Equality FC was that the second-tier women's team became more expensive to run than the seventh-tier men's due to the cost of creeping professionalisation in the Championship. Yet the commitment had remained to provide both with the same budget and, as the coronavirus crisis struck, Lewes continued to rely on written-off director loans. So much so that, by the summer of 2023, more than £2 million had been pumped into the club since Equality FC was launched. Almost two thirds of that was provided in 2021-22 and 2022-2023 by two outgoing board members, Ed Ramsden and Charlie Dobres, who were never likely to be able to keep bankrolling the club. Lewes were still being feted for 'Equality FC', including receiving a number of diversity awards, not harmed by providing a home at their 3,000-capacity stadium, The Dripping Pan, to a 10ft statue of two 18th century bisexual female pirates. They were also handed a £750,000 grant via the Premier League Stadium Fund for a new carpet-hybrid pitch at the ground. And, in arguably the biggest match in their history, they hosted United in the quarter-final of the 2023 Women's FA Cup in front of a record 2,801 crowd. 'A never-ending cycle of boom and bust' Financial salvation, and more, then appeared to arrive in the shape of a proposed takeover of the women's team by Mercury 13 as part of a £79.1 million investment into clubs worldwide. But this proved even more divisive, with Collins part of a group of eight former board members – including one of the original six behind the CBS – writing an open letter opposing the move. It read: 'Over the past few years, the club has sacrificed sustainability at the expense of chasing on-field success. The investment has driven the women's team to unprecedented heights. But competing with clubs such as Manchester United and Liverpool has come at a considerable financial cost. 'Directors' donations have climbed steeply over the past five years. In the last financial year alone, one director donated £600,000. That level of donations simply isn't sustainable. 'We believe the answer is not to return to private ownership, with all the risks that entails. Instead, we believe the answer is to remain a 100 per cent community-owned club that finds its natural place in the football pyramid. Private ownership leads almost every football club in the UK through a never-ending cycle of boom and bust. And usually leaves supporters as powerless bystanders and the townsfolk as the bank of last resort.' Takeover and investment plans shelved The deal was put to a vote of the club's 2,573 fan owners and although 67.8 per cent of those who participated were in favour, turnout was just 42 per cent, sparking concerns there was not enough support for the move. It was abandoned, with Lewes even citing the fact that it would have contravened their 'core principles of equality' because it would have resulted in a cash bonanza for the women but nothing for the men. The club later announced it was 'seeking legal advice' over a 'potential conflict of interest' during the Mercury 13 talks, which Telegraph Sport has been told did not find any wrongdoing. Things were also going awry on the field for the women's team, who found themselves in a relegation dogfight which they lost in April last year despite a crowd of 2,614 cheering them on against eventual champions Crystal Palace. That spelt the end of almost £500,000-a-year of FA funding and television revenue and, without access to the director loans that had sustained them, the club slashed their budget for the women's and – therefore correspondingly – the men's teams. By then, not even record average league attendances for both sides could mask the plight facing Lewes and there were calls for the Equality FC campaign to be scrapped, including from Dobres's wife, Karen, a former club director who had been instrumental in promoting it. She and others advocated a move to what they called 'equity', which would involve the women's team being given a bigger budget than the men's in the hope both would ultimately benefit. Instead, Lewes recently floated the idea of launching an investment scheme from which owners could make a financial return but the plans, which contravened the principles under which the CBS had been founded, were quickly abandoned. That was towards the end of a season in which Lewes Women finished sixth in the 12-team National League Premier Division South. The men's team ended the campaign 13th in the 22-team Isthmian Premier. 'You are required to live beyond your means' Lewes's appeal for donations followed less than a month later in an open letter published on their website. It was written by Joe Short, who joined the board a year and a half earlier. Telling Telegraph Sport 'no one's really sure' what would happen if the money did not materialise, he was nevertheless confident the threat to Lewes was not existential. He added: 'It means that we have to shrink to such an extent that our playing budgets would just be relegation budgets.' He also said there were no immediate plans to abandon Equality FC, which had brought income and attention to the club, and that the club were victims of what had become 'aggressively high' licensing requirements at the summit of women's football. Those requirements saw Blackburn Rovers become the second club to withdraw from the Championship in the past two seasons – after Reading did so last year – and Wolverhampton Wanderers chose not to submit an application to join the division. 'You are required to kind of live beyond your means in order to stay in the top two divisions,' Short added. 'We fear it is turning into a template of the men's game, where you lose money year after year.' Collins, meanwhile, had a blunt assessment of what would happen if Lewes failed to raise the money needed this summer. 'It's a business,' he said. 'If you can't pay your bills, you potentially face administration or insolvency.' He also warned they needed to 'stand on their own two feet', even if that meant being unable to 'compete against the Arsenals and Man Uniteds'. He added: 'We just want a club to go to on a weekend.'
