Thomas Tuchel picks his first England squad on Friday for the start of World Cup qualifying ahead of next summer’s tournament that he has been hired to win.
With time of the essence, Tuchel has not got long to get it right and, here, Telegraph Sport looks at five of his big decisions.
Ben White
Here is what we know – as reported by Telegraph Sport, Tuchel has spoken to White about his international exile and is willing to offer him a fresh start. What we have been waiting to find out, however, is if White has made himself available for selection again and whether he’s done enough to earn a place in Tuchel’s first squad.
White made his first start for Arsenal for four months in the Champions League draw with PSV Eindhoven on Wednesday night and was understandably rusty. But Trent Alexander-Arnold’s injury may have freed up a place at right-back and White offers Tuchel the chance to switch between a back four and a back three, which he may be interested in. Tuchel has been to Italy to watch Kyle Walker, whose form with AC Milan has been patchy. Walker’s experience and know-how would be valuable to a new England head coach, but it is certainly debatable whether his form would justify his selection.
Harry Kane plan B
This was an issue former manager Gareth Southgate never properly cracked. Of course, Kane will be England’s first-choice centre forward, but behind him Southgate regularly shuffled his pack and rarely gave strikers a prolonged chance to make themselves the captain’s full-time deputy.
Ollie Watkins recently got close to becoming England’s Plan B, starting ahead of Kane against Greece in November. But the Aston Villa star has not been at his best this season and had to go off with a knock against Club Brugge on Wednesday night. Ivan Toney has been in sensational goalscoring form, but will Tuchel pick a player who is performing in Saudi Arabia? That will be an interesting test case. Ipswich Town striker Liam Delap, who has scored 10 goals in the Premier League, might offer a more similar alternative to Kane than Watkins. Dominic Solanke’s return from injury is timely for Tuchel.
Marcus Rashford and Jack Grealish
Rashford proved he is fit and ready to go with a good performance in Villa’s Champions League victory against Club Brugge in which he earned an opponent a red card and also provided another assist for Marco Asensio. It will be a year later this month since Rashford’s last England appearance and the word is that he is desperate to do everything he can to add to his 60 caps. The 27-year-old is still yet to score for Villa, but that has been plenty of evidence that he is getting his mojo back.
Part of Tuchel’s decision over Rashford will also depend on whether Jack Grealish is called up, despite his lack of action for Manchester City. The former Villa player was an unused substitute in City’s defeat by Nottingham Forest and has played less football than ever this season. But he showed under interim head coach Lee Carsley what a weapon he can still be for England and he is known to be a popular figure among the squad.
Left-back
Lewis Hall was looking like the solution to Tuchel’s left-back problem not so long ago, but the Newcastle United defender’s season-ending injury has reopened the debate over the position. Arsenal teenager Myles Lewis-Skelly has been under consideration for a first England call-up, even though his habit of picking up red cards will be a slight concern. Tino Livaremento filled in well for Hall at left-back for Newcastle in front of Tuchel at West Ham and his ability to play on either side makes him an attractive proposition.
Djed Spence has also proved this season that he can perform well at left-back and in his more natural right-back position. Spence has been one of Tottenham’s best performers this season and will not have gone unnoticed. Tuchel may also have cast an eye towards Crystal Palace in his hunt for left-backs with Tyrick Mitchell now competing with on-loan Ben Chilwell, who won the Champions League under the former Bayern Munich manager at Chelsea.
Midfield puzzle
Here’s the easy bit – Jude Bellingham, Cole Palmer and Phil Foden will all be part of Tuchel’s first squad, barring an unknown injury or a huge surprise. The harder part for the German is how he will use all his midfield talent, given that Bellingham, Palmer and Foden all like to play as a number 10, given the choice. Much will depend on who Tuchel sees as a potential partner to Declan Rice in the centre of midfield. Could he move Bellingham back to partner him to accommodate Palmer or Foden higher up? Or will Tuchel opt for a more natural double pivot?
At Chelsea, Tuchel would refer to Conor Gallagher as ‘The English N’Golo Kanté’ because of his energy and ability to get around the pitch, while another of his old Stamford Bridge favourites, Reece James, has recently been deployed in midfield by Enzo Maresca. Tuchel is not short of options in the middle of the park – with Curtis Jones, Kobbie Mainoo and Angel Gomes – also available to him, but striking a balance has not proved easy for his predecessors.
Big first squad calls made by previous managers
New England manager: new rules. There is a strong tradition for the new man in the job, on the occasion of his first squad announcement, ending a famous international career and perhaps launching some others. Some managers do so because their appointment coincides with the decline of a great player, others because they wish to signal to the rest of the players that a new era is beginning. Or perhaps, in the case of Sir Alf Ramsey, they just have a profound distrust of foreigners.
Thomas Tuchel names his first England squad on Friday morning and may wish to cast his eye over those big decisions that some of his most celebrated predecessors made in naming their first squad. As well as those who took it as an opportunity to dish out some unexpected caps.
Sir Alf Ramsey: first squad, February 1963
The great 1966 World Cup winner was appointed by the Football Association in October 1962, initially combining the job with his final season in charge of Ipswich Town. He ended the nonsense of a selectors’ committee picking teams and squads that had blighted his predecessor Walter Winterbottom.
He also made a very quick decision about one of the most talented English forwards of the era, whom the previous season had been the top goalscorer in Serie A. Gerry Hitchens was, by the time Ramsey took over England, part of an Inter Milan team that had become Italian champions. To this day he is one of only three Englishmen to win Serie A. He had five England goals in seven caps including the only one in the 3-1 defeat to Brazil in the quarter-finals of the 1962 World Cup. He was 28.
Hitchens went to meet Ramsey at a European Cup tie between Ipswich and AC Milan at San Siro in November 1962. The historian Leo McKinstry says the conversation went thus.
“’Hallo, Alf’, said Hitchens.
‘Oh yes, said Alf condescendingly. ‘You’re playin’ in these parts’”.
Ramsey simply did not believe a true Englishman had any business playing anywhere other than the Football League. Hitchens never won another cap.
Sir Bobby Robson: first squad, September 1982
The last cap that double Ballon d’Or winner Kevin Keegan ever won for England was under Ron Greenwood against Spain at the 1982 World Cup finals. Later that summer, aged 31, he signed for Newcastle United where he would become a hero for an embattled club who embraced him as one of their own. Robson really was one of their own, a man whose working life had begun as a miner in Langley Park colliery in County Durham. Keegan, from Scunthorpe, also came from mining stock.
Robson left Keegan out of his first squad for a European championship qualifier against Denmark in September 1982 and when he next visited St James’ Park was met with a splenetic reaction. “I was showered with phlegm by my own people, the Newcastle supporters,” Robson would write years later in his 2005 autobiography, “Farewell but not Goodbye”. Of the decision to end Keegan’s England career Robson wrote: “The rift with Keegan hurt us both. But now we get on extremely well.”
Glenn Hoddle: first squad, September 1996
A precocious 21-year-old David Beckham had endured a stop-start beginning to his Manchester United career, but by September 1996 the midfielder was well in the groove. Not least because in Alex Ferguson’s new-look United team, the then No 10 had scored from his own half against Wimbledon the previous month. Hoddle, picking his first England squad, was an admirer. Indeed, as Chelsea manager he has previously asked Ferguson if he could take Beckham on loan.
It was Ferguson’s view that an England call-up for Beckham that September, for the 1998 World Cup qualifier against Moldova, was premature. Hoddle picked Beckham anyway. With Ferguson’s temper reaching simmering point he instructed the Football Association that Beckham should not be permitted to talk to any of the press that followed the England team. Hoddle duly brought Beckham out for a press conference in front of the British media – thus embarking on a troublesome new period in his relationship with the United manager. Beckham, for his part, revelled in it.
Sven-Goran Eriksson: first squad, February 2001
To say some of the names in that first Eriksson squad were a surprise would be putting it mildly. Eriksson named three uncapped players: the 31-year-old Charlton Athletic full-back Chris Powell, as well as Sunderland’s Gavin McCann and Everton’s Michael Ball.
Powell, later an England assistant coach, would go on to win five caps including a debut in Eriksson’s first game against Spain. McCann and Ball would also make their debuts in that game as substitutes, although both would remain the archetypal one-cap wonders. “I am quite new in this country,” said England’s first ever overseas manager at his first squad announcement.
Steve McClaren: first squad, August 2006
Just weeks earlier a tearful Beckham had resigned as England captain, unprompted, after the team’s elimination from the 2006 World Cup finals. He had not, however, retired from international football. His decision on the captaincy was widely seen as a move to extend the international playing career of the 31-year-old, by then in his last season at Real Madrid. There was, therefore, considerable surprise when McClaren, not the FA’s first choice to succeed Eriksson, dropped Beckham from his squad to play a friendly against Greece.
“He took the news well,” McClaren said. “He was disappointed but I got the reaction I wanted. That was for him to continue to fight for a place. I will never close the door.”
But privately the intention was indeed to close the door. McClaren, Eriksson’s erstwhile assistant, believed that Beckham had simply got too big for any manager to handle. As the wheels fell off the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign, McClaren would select Beckham again the following June. Indeed, with the kind of longevity that has proven a feature of Beckham’s life, he remained an international beyond McClaren’s short time in the job. He won another 16 caps under Fabio Capello.
Gareth Southgate: first squad as permanent manager, March 2017
Southgate had been a temporary appointment for four games until he was given the role full-time by the FA at the end of November 2016. The captain and greatest England player of his generation, Wayne Rooney, also the all-time top goalscorer for the national team, had played in three of those four games with Southgate as interim coach.
The warning signs for Rooney was his demotion to substitute against Slovenia in October. He returned to the team the next month and captained England against Scotland but was injured for the second game against Spain. Then unfolded an unfortunate series of events in which Rooney appeared to have come into possession of a few bottles of red wine at the team hotel and subsequently joined a wedding party taking place there.
He would win just one more cap – a Wembley farewell party in November 2018 against the United States. Once in the chair Southgate showed his ruthless side and immediately got rid of Rooney, then just 31. As was his way, Southgate simply played down the significance of Rooney’s omission in March 2017, citing the form of others. But a page had been turned and an era ended.
