England fought hard to beat Norway in the World Cup quarter-final on Saturday, but manager Thomas Tuchel is clearly concerned.
“We made life very difficult for ourselves,” Tuchel said. “The result is fantastic, but I’m not happy with the performance.”
He did follow these quotes up by commending the players for their heart: “I’m impressed with the effort, team spirit and belief to overcome adversity.
“But I am also a football coach, and I think we can play better. We had a lot of momentum swings for both teams. We made life difficult in the way we played, sloppy, a lot of technical mistakes, not fast enough, not repetitive enough.”
So, what did he want to see? And more importantly, if the side are not playing as they should be, why do they keep on winning
When Tuchel selected his World Cup squad, it was clear that he had a specific style of play in mind.
Players were selected based on how well they could perform in predefined roles – think Jude Bellingham and Morgan Rogers competing for the number 10 shirt pre-tournament.
These fixed roles are underpinned by some key principles, some of which are: dominate possession, press aggressively, play deliberate passes to entice opposition pressure. After enticing pressure, accelerate play, looking to find forwards in space against defensive blocks, attack down the flanks, using wide triangles and rotations to create chances
Throughout the World Cup we have seen these in glimpses, but Tuchel is unsatisfied.
Almost all of the issues Tuchel mentioned after the game were about how his side played on the ball, so for context, we need to look at England’s attacking and Norway’s defensive set-up.
Stale Solbakken’s men defended in a 4-5-1 shape, blocking space, with England attacking in a 3-2-5 shape on the ball.
Marc Guehi, John Stones and Ezri Konsa made up the first line. Declan Rice and Elliot Anderson formed the two in midfield. Left-back Nico O’Reilly joined the front four, giving them an extra player against Norway’s back line.
