England v Latvia: World Cup 2026 qualifier
We've all been there: we're sat on the bus and someone bigger, harder and braver takes unlikely and unreciprocated interest in at what we are looking. A question that is easily answered on the facts, but in practice offers no correct reply beyond absorbing pain.
Such is managing head-coaching England's men. If you lose, you are treated badly, whereas if you win, you are also treated badly – just ask Alf Ramsey.
And games like tonight's are an intensified version of the same. Draw or lose and it's the worst embarrassment since that time in reception when you got changed for your first PE lesson and pulled down your pants as well as your trousers (OK, that was me, not Thomas Tuchel); win narrowly and you're a joyless void who doesn't know what he's doing; win well and anyone could've done it.
It's more or less impossible for England not to qualify for the World Cup and, when they get there, chances they'll be in a group with teams who are vastly inferior. Which means the success of otherwise of Tuchel's tenure rests on a maximum of four matches – and if he has Gareth Southgate's luck of the draw, one or two.
That's a lot for any manager head coach to assimilate, especially when also dealing with the additional stresses of the job: the press, the players, the fans, the suits. Tuchel, though, thinks he can do it and so he should. A strong man-manager with tactical smarts, he won an unlikely Champions League with Chelsea and has also handled Bayern's backroom and Paris' petrolheads; similar was not so of Roy Hodgson, nor Sam Allardyce, nor Gareth Southgate.
Yet it was of Fabio Capello. And for that reason, it remains relevant that, when we're on the bus and someone bigger, harder and braver takes unlikely and unreciprocated interest in at what we are looking, though there is no correct reply beyond absorbing pain, there is a correct response: run away as quickly as your little legs will carry you.
Kick-off: 7.45pm GMT Share
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