Today’s news that Thomas Tuchel will lead our England senior men’s team through to UEFA EURO 2028 is hugely positive for our aspiration to win major international tournaments. We have secured a world class coach for our upcoming home EUROs, giving us the best possible chance of success.
Our plan is always, where possible, to have a clear position on our coaching team going into a major tournament. We agreed with Thomas that we would review our partnership after securing qualification for the World Cup. After an outstanding year, our discussions were straightforward: Thomas and his team wanted to stay, and we wanted them to stay.
After the World Cup, we go straight into top-tier UEFA Nations League matches with coaching stability and the draw for that competition takes place this evening. We want to do as well as possible in the Nations League, as it continues to grow in importance.
Thomas is a winner who has achieved on the biggest stages; a winner who loves English football and is enjoying the rhythm of the international game after all his club success. Feedback from our players on his coaching and support team has been excellent, both on and off the pitch.
Some will ask, ‘why not wait until after the World Cup’? The reality is that for any fixed-term role in any industry, people will consider their future prior to its ending. We have a world class coach, doing a great job and the opportunity arose to secure him for a further tournament. We have taken that opportunity and now everyone has clarity, as we have previously had heading into major tournaments.
Our experience with Sarina Wiegman and Lee Carsley with the senior women and men’s under-21s respectively is that having clarity on the future before a major tournament allowed both to fully focus on the task at hand – helping us to return with trophies from both EUROs last summer.
Winning tournaments is hard, and this summer will be challenging in terms of opponents, schedule and climate. However, we believe we have the right coaching team in place to give us the best possible chance to become only the third European team to win a men's World Cup outside Europe. Thomas and his team are completely focused on that ambition.
Thomas is brilliantly supported by his number two Anthony Barry and Justin Cochrane, both highly talented English coaches. They form part of a really strong support team with Henrique Hilário, Nico Meyer and James Melbourne.
Lee Carsley has also built a superb reputation with our MU21s and is a significant part of our pathway, with so many players he has coached now contributing to the senior team.
For the long term, we want to have a strong pipeline of home grown coaches who can come through as potential candidates to manage our national teams. We are taking a lead role to support the pipeline of homegrown coaches through their careers. Dan Ashworth is leading our work on this from SGP.
