Thomas Tuchel has declared England ‘ready’ for the World Cup.
An impressed Three Lions boss, speaking after his side breezed past Costa Rica in a thunderstorm-delayed Orlando warm-up, hailed the work carried out in their Florida prep camp – and added that he felt ‘alive’.
Goals from Declan Rice, Anthony Gordon and Ollie Watkins delivered a 3-0 victory in what was an entirely one-sided friendly from which England emerged injury free.
With seven days to go until their first group match against Croatia in Dallas, the German delivered an upbeat message as his ‘clicking’ side seek to become champions of the world for the first time in 60 years.
‘We set the tone today in the meeting and the players were ready,’ he said of a ‘high-level performance’. ‘If we can really play like this and grow into the tournament and have this kind of cohesion and brotherhood and team spirit that we showed today, then we will have an amazing connection with the fans and this will hopefully be an amazing experience.’
Tuchel is clearly excited by what is around the corner. ‘It’s the World Cup and it’s coming,’ he said. ‘Once the ball is rolling and the games are already there, then we’ll feel it…the tension will grow, but it’s normally the stuff that I personally enjoy the most, when you feel that you’re alive.’
Thomas Tuchel has declared his England side are ‘ready’ to deliver at the World Cup
Jude Bellingham started ahead of Morgan Rogers in a match delayed by an hour thanks to torrential rain and lightning and was one of the standout performers. In the second-half the Real Madrid star was at the centre of a curious situation when England won a penalty and he picked up the ball to take it only to be told by assistant Anthony Barry to hand it to Barcelona’s Gordon, who hammered home.
Tuchel played the incident down. ‘There was just a lot of substitutions and then it was not clear anymore the order of the takers,’ he explained. ‘Anthony was the second taker. It was not on the wall, normally it’s on the wall because we know we only have five substitutes, there were already a lot of substitutes, so we had a bit of a miscommunication. It was our responsibility and we needed to do it verbally.’
When asked to discuss the performances of Bellingham and Gordon, Tuchel declined to do so. ‘I don’t want to talk about the two performances because for me it’s absolutely too short to focus on these two guys,’ he said. ‘We had a very strong team from the beginning, we knew that, and we had strong substitutes because that’s the nature of the team and the attitude from the bench was top. I just liked the performance over the 90 minutes, both players, Jude and Anthony, were a part of it.’
Tuchel was delighted that his players had done what he had asked of them.
‘I said before the match we want to push it to the next level, from intensity, commitment, cohesion, and we did that,’ he explained. ‘We see the adaptation to the heat, we see the adaptation to the climate, and we see things clicking. The players delivered and I’m proud of them how they did it. So this is the most important, how we play, and the result takes care of itself, but we did it on a high level.’
England will return to West Palm Beach for another training session and in-house game before the players have a day-and-a-half off. ‘They earned it,’ said Tuchel. They will then head to their Kansas City tournament base to add the finishing touches.
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