Thomas Tuchel has been confirmed as the next manager of the England national football team, to take over from the hapless and seemingly confused Lee Carsley. The 51-year-old German will be given an 18-month contract and will assume his duties in January 2025, in good time to get to work on the qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup (which begin in March).
This is good news for England fans. Isn’t it? Tuchel is one of the top ranked coaches in the world and probably the best qualified man available (assuming Pep Guardiola was the pipe dream most assume it to have been). Tuchel has actually won stuff – like the Champions League at Chelsea – and served at multiple top clubs. He’s a former Uefa men’s coach of the year.
The whole concept of international sport is, by definition, discriminatory
A tactical whizz apparently, Tuchel knows most of the players, speaks English and, unlike England’s incumbent manager, actually seems to want the job. Oh, and according to Harry Kane (whom he coached at Bayern Munich) Tuchel is a ‘top bloke’. What’s not to like?
Well, there is the small, or perhaps not so small, matter of Tuchel not actually being English, which is bothering a few people at least. A straw poll in the Daily Telegraph is running at 67 per cent for the appointment and 33 per cent against. Given the above-mentioned advantages, it is reasonable to assume that for those opposed the issue is Tuchel’s nationality.
In today’s hyper sensitive identity obsessed world such attitudes might provoke gasps of horror, and accusations of at best a provincial attitude, and at worst racism (or perhaps Germanophobia?). We have had foreign coaches before after all, so surely the only people questioning Tuchel’s appointment are the sort that sing ‘Ten German bombers’ and still obsess over the second world war. Deplorables in other words – the Guardian certainly seems to think so.
But the problem with this interpretation is that it disregards the whole concept of international sport, which is, by definition, discriminatory. Only players either born in this country, or with a verifiable bloodline, are eligible to play for England. No financial inducement is going to enable Kylian Mbappe or Lionel Messi to sport the three lions. They are barred.
And with good reason. International football would be meaningless without at least reasonably strict eligibility rules. The rationale being that when the team succeeds, the whole nation can take pride in that achievement, as members of a society that is well ordered enough to produce winning sportsmen and women. If you buy into international sport at all, and enjoy it, you are buying into that hypothesis.
More broadly (though some, such as Emily Thornberry, may find this distasteful) international sport is a validation of the concept of the nation state. The idea is that we belong to, and can take pleasure and pride in the achievements of the representatives of a geographically and culturally defined area. When a foreign coach leads a British international team, any triumphs are somewhat diluted.
I’m just about old enough to remember when this seemed to matter to the FA. Back then the question of a foreign coach for the England national team would have been unthinkable. Even being English wasn’t enough, you had to be well-behaved too. The best qualified candidate to replace Don Revie in the late 70s was undoubtedly Brian Clough but ‘old big head’ was passed over in favour of (in Cloughie’s words) ‘an old sheepdog’ in the amiable and unthreatening form of Ron Greenwood. Those days are long gone, winning is now clearly the uppermost, perhaps only, thought on the minds of the FA’s board of directors.
To be fair, it could be that for the FA, and apparently the majority of the fans, England’s trophy drought has induced a form of neurosis where almost anyone would be welcome if there is a reasonable chance of success. You feel even the sadly departed Maradona could have had the job if it were believed he would have delivered a trophy or two. Well, perhaps not, but you get the point.
No disrespect to Thomas Touchel in any of this, and one is impressed at him taking on this unenviable challenge when a better remunerated club job would probably have been his in time. He may well be the best man for the job, if the job is just winning trophies. But if that is so, then the job description, the unwritten one, has narrowed considerably in my lifetime, in a way that might make you worry a bit about the future of international football.
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