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Confirm Thomas Tuchel, England coachHis team played a style that relied heavily on improvisation in a 1-0 win over New Zealand.
The Three Lions’ victory was clinched by Harry Kane’s thunderous header in first-half stoppage time in front of 25,889 fans at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium.
Against the 85th and lowest-ranked team at the World Cup, England had 71 per cent possession and 23 shots, but the team were unable to score more when Tuchel changed his entire line-up towards the end of the match.
Liverpool winger Rio Njomoha took part in the clash, becoming the fifth-youngest player to make his England debut at just 17 years and 281 days, while Jude Bellingham took over as captain in the second half.
Tuchel commented on the team’s overall performance, saying: “I agree, I’m not very happy with it. I enjoyed the second half more than the first half. I think in the second half we were more aggressive, more attacking with and without the ball and created more chances. There were some good half-chances and some good penetrations into the box.”
“In the first half we were out of position and there were a lot of improvisations. It slowed down the pace of our game and made it difficult to press back because we weren’t in the positions we wanted to be in when we started the attack.”
He continued. “The brief history of the meeting is this. We relied on crosses and a lot of long shots, which is not usually our style of play. We played a lot of long balls and a lot of long passes. This was not part of the training for the last four days. It was more of a mix of everything and that’s why the first half turned out the way it did.”
“To put it into context, most of our players last played together in November, half a year ago. We’ve only had four training sessions together and we’ve completely mixed up the squad in a way we’ve never played with these formations before to give everyone 45 minutes. Then you have the conditions and the playing field, and everything can seem simple.”
