England tactician: How Jude Bellingham became Thomas Tuchel’s key player

In June 2024, Jude Bellingham salvaged England’s Euro hopes with a stunning 95th minute strike against Slovakia.

At the time, he celebrated by shouting to the enthusiastic, cheering crowd.

“Who else?”

later England beat Panama 2-0.the 22-year-old’s performance is similar to that.

Tuchel has been adamant in defining the system and his approach has generally looked the same throughout the tournament, but on Saturday we saw subtle changes in the squad with injuries.

Bellingham was central to the rise of this system, until then some cracks in the paper.

It was a tale of two halves for Bellingham, who stepped into the box-to-box role in the absence of Dylan Rice.

In the first two games, England chose to build from the back, fielding two centre-backs and Elliott Anderson in the middle of the field. Both full-backs Rice and Bellingham left the midfield position, allowing Harry Kane to join Anderson in wide space.

This shape differs from Panama.

Jarrell Quansah has come in for the injured Reece James at right-back and has been asked to slot into the ball-handling back three – alongside Mark Guhi and Ezri Konsa. Nico O’Reilly continues in his left back role.

Instead of Kane dropping deep, Bellingham was tasked with supporting Anderson in midfield and England’s ball shape was flipped loosely between 3-2-5 and 3-1-6 as Bellingham read the game.

After the game, Tuchel confirmed his opinion, explaining that Bellingham “played like 10 when we had the ball” and that he wanted to “have six players on the end line” – possibly in an attempt to outnumber Panama’s 5 backs.