{"id":634497,"date":"2026-06-12T08:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T08:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/634497\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T08:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T08:09:11","slug":"england-tuchel-to-bench-gordon-bellingham-and-saka-for-croatia-best-three-as-finishers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/634497\/","title":{"rendered":"England: Tuchel to bench Gordon, Bellingham and Saka for Croatia? ‘Best three’ as finishers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Owen has advised England manager Thomas Tuchel to bench his \u201cbest three players behind Harry Kane\u201d in a radical tactical call to win the World Cup.<\/p>\n

The Three Lions won their final group warm-up game 3-0 against Costa Rica on Wednesday<\/a> ahead of their opening Group L game against Croatia next week with Anthony Gordon, Jude Bellingham and Noni Madueke starting in the forward positions behind Kane as the central striker.<\/p>\n

Madueke was deputising for Bukayo Saka as Tuchel looks to nurse him through an achilles injury, but the performances of Gordon and Bellingham were promising as they battle Marcus Rashford and Morgan Rogers respectively for a place in the starting XI.<\/p>\n

Much has been made of those selection calls in the media, but Owen a) doesn\u2019t really \u201ccare who starts there\u201d, and b) would actually keep the \u201cbest players\u201d in reserve to make an impact from the bench in the exhausting conditions.<\/p>\n

He told World Cup odds (via Metro)<\/a>: \u201cIf I were Thomas Tuchel, I would be literally changing the hell out of those positions constantly and I don\u2019t care if somebody scores a hat-trick in the first game; they still get substituted at half-time and you put on the next three.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re so strong in those positions and what\u2019s going to win this tournament is freshness, and what\u2019s going to kill us is the heat, tiredness, fatigue so I don\u2019t care who starts there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact I would go the other way round and if Thomas Tuchel has got his idea on who are the best three players to play in behind Harry Kane then I would put them all on the bench and bring them on in the second half because that\u2019s even more important in the first half if you do what I think we should do and just change the hell out of them all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be giving them no more than 45 minutes every game because if you\u2019re going to play six players in those positions across the game then I prefer the best ones to be playing at the end when the opponents are fatigued.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: World Cup 2026 Power Rankings: Starting positions confirmed as tournament arrives at last<\/a><\/p>\n

Favourites and dark horses<\/p>\n

Owen picked out France as his favourites to win the World Cup and Germany as his \u201cdark horses\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think France individually are the best team,\u201d Owen added. \u201cWhen you look at their players, they\u2019re miles better than anybody else in terms of individuals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they play as a team and they\u2019re the best team and probably the likeliest winners.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think England will be a quarter-final or a semi-final at best would be my guess, but I have a sneaky feeling that Germany could do well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they could do well. So France would be my pick, England to get to the quarters or semis and Germany to be the dark horses.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Owen has advised England manager Thomas Tuchel to bench his \u201cbest three players behind Harry Kane\u201d in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[309,448,59,32977,50,101,55531,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-634497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-england","tag-front-page","tag-gb","tag-michael-owen","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-thomas-tuchel","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}