In the end the “Impossible Job” swallows them all. There is no escape from that certain fate, no mindset or masterplan that can outsmart the gods; that can heal a nation tangled up in its cultural identity of arrogance and insecurity. 

There is no other conclusion to draw after watching Thomas Tuchel choke in Miami. His was an inexplicable second-half tactical failure more egregious than anything we saw under Gareth Southgate, more hopelessly English than anyone could have expected.

Except this one, though familiar, was different. The curious thing about England’s semi-final exit at the hands of Argentina is that Tuchel bottled the occasion because he was unaware it could be bottled. It was not cowardice but misplaced confidence and, in a cruel twist, it was precisely because Tuchel was never perturbed by the weight of English history that things went so horribly wrong in the final half hour.

Everything that defines Englishness is wrapped up in the men’s England national team, from the exceptionalism to the cloying anxiety, from the weary battle-cry of a country yearning for a bygone era to the anger and self-loathing that defines its modern temperament. 

What it means to be English is inglorious failure, vanity, the scream of defiance against those who doubt its superiority, a superiority defined by, erm, well actually we haven’t worked that bit out yet. That the men’s football team so perfectly encapsulates those characteristics makes crashing out of a World Cup doubly painful if you’re from this place, doubly satisfying if you aren’t.

Before Thomas Tuchel there was Gareth Southgate, the man who did so much to release England from their chains, exorcise the ghosts, free his players from decades of England-rules-the-waves expectation, but who was ultimately dragged down by those same forces. Read back his ‘Dear England’ soliloquy – turned into a saccharine play at the National Theatre, would you believe – and hear a man obsessed with Englishness, weighed down by that insufferable suffering. 

Thomas Tuchel. Photo: Getty Images

The point of hiring a German manager was to avoid these traps. Tuchel is a cool head, a tactician, in many ways the anti-Southgate, and throughout the 2026 World Cup he played the part superbly. He rejected the clamour for changes or the criticisms of his setup just as emphatically as he refused to sing the national anthem. 

Here was a man incapable of syncing into the abyss because he simply could not see its allure. Managing England was not the pinnacle of his career. It did not contain the baggage of Gazza’s tears, Maradona’s Hand of God, Croatia’s midfield squeeze. 

Here was someone with a self-confidence that would ooze through his players, finishing the job that Southgate had started but that, by the time Dear England came along, was already morphing into that uniquely English angst and mawkish sentimentality. Here was someone who could make significant tactical changes, between games and during them, watching calmly as his plans came off against Congo, Mexico, Norway. 

Tuchel’s was a wilful ignorance of history that was taking England to new heights – right up until the ignorance became its own kind of hubris and the narrative flipped. Southgate knew far too much; Tuchel not enough.

Anyone who has watched England wilt in major tournaments, who has felt generation after generation freeze with the fear of tomorrow’s headlines, would have known that the message at the second hydration break needed to be positive. Everyone familiar with the England team knew that Tuchel’s decision to double down on defence, moving to a back five and parking the bus for a full 30 minutes, would drain confidence and reawaken the horror of decades of national trauma.

What England needed, after ten minutes of Argentine pressure following Anthony Gordon’s opener, was a simple reset; a reminder they were the better team and could push their opponents back. But Tuchel leant into the pattern that was developing, not through fear of failure but fearlessness, not hoping to defy England’s inferiority complex but ignorant that there even was one. His Dortmund, Chelsea, or Paris Saint-Germain could hold out in those circumstances. That he thought England would is an epic, cinematic mistake, another slide for the montage of England’s self-inflicted near misses.

Photo: Getty Images.

It comes for everyone in the end, this job. Even those who believe they have escaped its madness are dragged in by the fates with a gleeful, spiteful irony. Tuchel will leave Miami uncertain of whether his conservatism was costly or pragmatic. The nation at large will see this as a colossal tactical mistake, larger and more unforgivable than Southgate’s passive midfields. 

Gareth seized up, did nothing. Tuchel actively invited forces he knew nothing about and by retreating let history, horror, Englishness creep into the legs.

“I don’t believe so much in an English thing and a curse or whatever,” Tuchel said after the game. “It’s repeating itself in different moments. It’s different coaches, different players, different situations. What cost us today was that we were not active enough in any structure.”

Right now there is little sign of understanding, but as the fog lifts Tuchel may begin to wonder how his instincts failed him spectacularly, how he froze in the headlights, how he morphed into a caricature of every England manager past. More immediately, he will be shocked by the strength of feeling that erupts back home. 

His crime is not understanding the history of the role. The crime of his predecessor was understanding it too deeply. It’s impossible, this, it really is. Not a single England manager has recovered from the role to coach at a high level again. These days Southgate can be found drifting about, making weird documentaries, doing charity work; David Brent-esque in his aimless post-show drift.

Tuchel may be different, and more than likely he will stumble on to Euro 2028. But there are serious lessons to be learnt before then. 

Tactics will take you so far, Thomas, but on this anxious and tormented island there is something more fundamental at play here. Not active enough in the structure? Welcome to England. Nobody gets out alive.