2026-06-18 11:14:02
Thomas Tuchel felt that England overcame early “nerves” to win their World Cup opener against Croatia.
The Three Lions made an impressive start to the tournament with a 4-2 victory in their Group L clash in Dallas on Wednesday (17.06.26) and the coach was impressed with his team’s second-half reaction after an untidy opening period.
Tuchel said: “I think we showed a bit of nerves. Maybe we wanted to do overdo it, but we clearly overthought our decisions. It took us too long to take decisions. When we could play short, we played long. When we could have played long, we played short.
“We couldn’t find a real rhythm in our game and even in defending it took us too long to make decisions to go as a block into the high press. We spend way too much time in a low block, which is also not our identity and not what we wanted to have.”
Tuchel felt that taking the lead twice didn’t help England settle down during the first 45 minutes.
He said: “I had more the impression we have to protect something now, got punished for it, which is psychologically not easy, but I loved the reaction after half-time. We encouraged them to go for it, to play with more courage, to be brave, to be ourselves and, like I said, I loved the reaction.”
Tuchel also expressed his pride in managing at the World Cup for the first time, although he was frustrated that photographers blocked his view of the England players as they sang the national anthem.
The German coach said: “I have to tell you something: I am begging FIFA to change the position of the photographers in the national anthem because I could not see my team in the national anthem.
“I was waiting for this moment. It was a very, very special moment today and I was standing in front of a wall of 50 photographers, half a metre away, and I could not see one single player.
“It ruined a little bit my experience. It is very emotional. When I was young and when I started coaching, this was too big to dream of this kind of occasion.”
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