Join the Miguel Delaney: Inside Football newsletter and go beyond the game with exclusive insightsJoin the Miguel Delaney: Inside Football newsletterJoin the Miguel Delaney: Inside Football newsletterTRY 1 MONTH FOR FREEIt wasn’t just the performance that England had waited years for, it was an attitude.“Even if we lose,” Thomas Tuchel told his players at half-time in Dallas, “we do it our way.”There is so much in those few words that could yet have resulted in so much more than the four brilliant goals they got against Croatia.There was a new ethos, and the fulfilment of a promise. Tuchel had long said he wanted to restore a proper Premier League intensity to the national side, and here it was, offering one of the best performances in the World Cup so far.Maybe the best?That’s a debate that might seem more trivial, but could well point to how this tournament ends up finishing.Here, at the beginning in Dallas, England hadn’t initially started as well as anticipated.They went in at half-time of a then erratic 2-2 no doubt expecting a rocket.The watching world probably expected similar, given assistant manager Anthony Barry’s strikingly candid half-time interview.Jude Bellingham of England celebrates scoring his team’s third goal (Getty)Tuchel didn’t go as far as his coach, though. He was as forthright as ever, sure, but encouraging as well.Harry Kane described it as “a great speech”.The Bayern Munich striker noted: “He told us to ‘take the shackles off, calm down and let’s go’. He said “what’s the worst that can happen?”There was then the crescendo, the call to arms.These may seem like mere words, that of course always sound better in victory, but a key was how they changed England’s play.They signalled an abandonment of caution, a will to… go for it.If it’s going to be unfairly easy to unfavourably compare Gareth Southgate to Tuchel with performances like this, it’s undeniably true that the former manager’s time was characterised by constraint.Harry Kane opened England’s account at the World Cup (PA Wire)England were superbly structured, but only rarely displayed the adventure to open opposition systems, and almost never in tournaments. It was all more staccato.Southgate didn’t so much throw caution to the wind as wrap it around the team.Tuchel, as Kane intimated, whipped that off.The team was released, to rage through Croatia in England’s best tournament spell in years.“I loved the reaction,”…
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2026-06-18 11:34:57
