Thomas Tuchel says that he is “not ready to adapt” England’s playing style at the World Cup despite the heat – as it would “give up” the team’s strengths.<\/p>\n
Since starting his job as head coach in January 2025, Tuchel has made a point of saying how much he likes the physicality of English domestic football and that the national side should replicate that style.<\/p>\n
The 52-year-old’s squad selections have followed that thinking with an emphasis on physicality and powerful running when he picked his 26-man squad for the tournament.<\/p>\n
“They want to be active with the ball,” the German told BBC Sport about his England side before their World Cup opener against Croatia on Wednesday (21:00 BST). <\/p>\n
“We have a young group. We have a courageous group. We have a brave group of players.<\/p>\n
“So let’s let’s go for it. I mean, no one guarantees you that we win. So we want to at least try it, our style and our belief.”<\/p>\n
The temperatures in the USA, Mexico and Canada are extremely high and mandatory hydration breaks have been introduced in all matches, effectively breaking them into quarters.<\/p>\n
And speaking at the news conference before the Croatia match, Tuchel said hydration breaks can “change the character of each half”. <\/p>\n
He acknowledged the three-minute intervals give coaches chance to “change and reset” during games while delivering “group messages”. <\/p>\n
Temperatures in Dallas will be more than 30C by the time England kick off their opening Group L game – but the effects of the heat will be reduced because the Dallas Stadium is one of the air-conditioned indoor venues being used at this World Cup.<\/p>\n
And starting the tournament in that stadium has given Tuchel belief that his side can impose their style on Croatia “because we play indoors”.<\/p>\n
But the England boss did reference the impact of the heat has had on his players at their Kansas City training base.<\/p>\n
“Yesterday, it was very hot even here in training,” Tuchel said. <\/p>\n
“And we could feel that it has a more impact than, for example, today. So let’s see.<\/p>\n
“I’m just not ready to adapt into a different style of football because of circumstances that we cannot influence. I think we would just give up our strengths.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thomas Tuchel says that he is “not ready to adapt” England’s playing style at the World Cup despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-708668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}