Thomas Tuchel: Has England manager judged this international break correctly?

Tuchel was named as England manager in October 2024, taking up the role on 1 January 2025.

Yet, despite already having his contract extended, he has only had 11 games.

To put that into context, Roy Hodgson’s first 11 matches came within the 169 days following his appointment. It has taken Tuchel 609 days to reach the same number.

England breezed through qualifying, winning all eight games, scoring 22 goals and conceding none to finish comfortably clear at the top of Group K.

However, their group opponents were Albania, Andorra, Latvia and Serbia – four sides ranked outside the world’s top 20.

Indeed, their toughest test in terms of ranking last year was a friendly against Senegal, who were 19th in the world at the time. England lost 3-1.

When the fixtures against Uruguay and Japan were announced, Tuchel said “we wanted to play two teams ranked in the top 20 in the world and test ourselves against opponents from outside of Europe”.

So do we now have a better idea of how the Three Lions might shape up against higher-quality opposition in the summer?

“We expected an indifferent performance because of the changes,” ex-England goalkeeper Paul Robinson told BBC Radio 5 Live. “I’m not so sure we have learned anything different about the team as a collective.

“We weren’t looking at England as a collective. It wasn’t a performance to be judged as a team – it was for individuals.”

BBC senior football correspondent Sami Mokbel added: “I wouldn’t go as far as saying it was a pointless exercise – but I’m not sure Tuchel would have left Wembley having gleaned too much new information.

“That’s the problem with this sort of audition, players are always likely to take an approach with a view to impressing the manager instead of playing the game they would usually.”