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New England head coach Thomas Tuchel says he will be concentrating on football - Getty Images/Eddie Keogh
Thomas Tuchel says he does not intend to get involved in politics in his role as England’s new head coach.
The 51-year-old German added it was one of the reasons he insisted the job title in his 18-month contract was that of head coach and not manager.
There is a feeling at the Football Association that Tuchel’s predecessor Sir Gareth Southgate often ended up being a spokesman – partly through design – for the issues of the day.
Tuchel is keen to avoid this.
“I think we have the best chance when you allow the head coach to focus on football,” he said. “I understand from your perspective maybe the importance of the role. But maybe I can hide a little bit behind being not English and not talk to everything that happens in your country out of respect and focus a little bit more on football.”
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The OneLove armband proved to be controversial at the last World Cup - Getty Images/Marco Bertorello
Asked how he would have handled the issue of whether captains should have worn the OneLove rainbow armband at the last World Cup in Qatar – where same-sex relationships are illegal – in 2022, Tuchel said: “I think at some point it must be allowed for a football team that is sent to a World Cup to be a football team and not be a political statement and be a political role model for whatever it goes on, then it becomes sports-political.
“And people in the federation have to speak up, give their opinion, give a clear position, that is a clarity that helps them in the end. Because once these decisions are made you can endlessly debate about it because what can the players do? What can the coach do?
“They cannot be the scapegoat at the end of it and be punished for every little sentence that they say.
“So at some point, in this case, I would have taken my right to say ‘we can speak about football now because now we are here, if we like it or not, the tournament is here, it’s already decided, we qualified, for some of us it’s maybe the one chance in a lifetime and we want to make the best of it’.”
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Gareth Southgate and his assistant Steve Holland ‘take a knee’ before the match with Romania in 2021 - Getty Images/Scott Heppell
Southgate also had his misgivings about the issue which overshadowed the build-up to England’s opening group game against Iran with captain Harry Kane eventually not wearing the armband under threat of punishment from Fifa.
Southgate also took a strong stance on the right of his players to “take the knee” even when they were booed by some of their own supporters. He did not see the support for Black Lives Matter as political and was brave in – and was praised for – wanting to speak out on various matters and not ducking any of the questions he was asked.
But Southgate did often find himself discussing topics far away from football partly because he regarded his role as a figurehead and an ambassador as well as a manager. For example, he came in for criticism after suggesting there were “racial overtones” to the arguments over Brexit but felt it was his duty to speak up, partly because he had encouraged his players to do so.
The FA plan for chief executive Mark Bullingham and technical director John McDermott to make more public statements and it was telling that the former gave a lengthy media briefing in the week before Tuchel announced his first squad, inviting questions on any issues that wanted to be raised.
“First of all, in my contract I named myself head coach not manager, as a first step,” Tuchel said. “I’m very happy that John McDermott and Mark Bullingham are by my side who also take care of the FA who speak up for the interests of the FA.”
Sooner or later, politics always catches up with an England manager
Define political. In the life of the England manager it means very different things at different times. Thomas Tuchel wishes to stay out of politics – but in his job the politics seek you out. Which is not to say that the England manager ever has to declare for one side. The summer of last year encompassed a general election and Euro 2024 yet no one was any the wiser as to Sir Gareth Southgate’s view. Roy Hodgson embarked on Euro 2016 with the Brexit vote looming and never gave an indication of which way he went.
But the job is always political eventually – and for politics what really one means is controversy, polemic, the dreaded culture wars. The kind of controversies upon which Southgate was eventually invited to comment because they affected his players, and by extension his relationship with those players. He knew that if he did not reasonably back them, he could not do the job.
The greatest source of friction for Southgate was politics of race and of intergenerational conflict. When England players took the knee in 2021 and then again in the Nations League games in the summer of 2022, with the explicit support of Southgate, they were booed by some of their own fans. The young men who play the game are different to many of the men who watch them. The latter tend to be older and more predominantly white, and so, yes, there are politics of a sort at play there too. What Southgate was saying was that he was with his players and he understood their concerns. He could hardly have done otherwise given how he had invited them to open about their feelings and their past.
It was always hard to reconcile the notion that Southgate was controversial given his stance on most issues. He was politically agnostic. He was very patriotic. He admired the Royal family – and here was a man who said that his grandfather’s military service was a defining influence on him. He clearly felt the rainbow armband episode at the start of the Qatar World Cup finals was a misadventure. His most recent post-England contribution, the Richard Dimbleby Lecture on the BBC, was scrupulously careful not to draw lines politically while making a key point about the state of masculinity. That was always his way as England manager. But one inevitably ends up upsetting someone.
Eventually a manager has to take a stance
There are obvious ambushes awaiting for Tuchel – not least the political questions that face Germany currently. There are the politics of Fifa too, and the governments and regimes with which it does business. The United States, chief host of the 2026 World Cup for which Tuchel is contracted, is, one might have noticed, quite a political place at present.
A banner, a chant, a comment. Eventually a manager has to take a stance when it affects his players, and in doing so embrace the controversy. And, really, that is fine too. Southgate stayed with his players over taking the knee and came through that brutal summer of 2022 to carry on in the job for one more shot at the Euros post-Qatar.
What did that look like before Southgate? There was controversy, albeit, in hindsight, when the stakes felt much smaller. Sven Goran Eriksson effectively backed his players over the Football Association in 2004 when some of the squad – the Manchester United contingent – were at odds with the FA over the Rio Ferdinand ban. Fabio Capello quit over the FA’s decision to take the captaincy away from John Terry for Euro 2012 when he faced racially aggravated charges of which he was later cleared. In Qatar, the FA and the England team found itself outmanoeuvred by Fifa over the armband, and Southgate seemed to despair at the time and energy it absorbed.
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Fabio Capello quit over the FA’s decision to strip John Terry of the captaincy - Getty Images/Michael Regan
“I think at some point it must be allowed for a football team that is sent to a World Cup to be a football team,” Tuchel said, “and not be a political statement and be a … political role model for whatever goes on.” That is no bad approach to take, although it is worth remembering that the pressure to do something in the build-up to Qatar was immense, which was why the 10 European nations got entangled in the armband issue in the first place. Over the course of a few days a little storm raged and then it was all soon forgotten, which is a pertinent lesson for Tuchel.
Tuchel was an accomplished leader of Chelsea when the club was plunged into government sanctions in 2022. There can be few more tricky positions that having an oligarch owner sanctioned in connection with the invasion of a sovereign European nation yet he rode out that storm with distinction.
The England manager is sometimes obliged to take a stance – be it on taking the knee or a protest armband, and yet these things pass swiftly. The final verdict on an England manager does not tend to come for years. For Sir Bobby Robson, regarded as hopeless for much of his time in charge of England, it flipped right at the end of his time. For Southgate one suspects some perspective will emerge over time. Even Graham Taylor eventually got a sympathetic hearing – and his tournament record truly was dismal.
Controversies will come and go, and there will be a moment when Tuchel has to step in. It will never be enough to leave it to the men at the FA who gave him the job, most of whom the English football public would not recognise if they bought an ice cream from them. All the England manager has to do, as Tuchel surely knows, is try to help his players navigate through it.
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