Colin Sheridan: Picking a squad by numbers, Tuchel's England is all system and no soul
England manager Thomas Tuchel during the England World Cup squad announcement at Wembley Stadium, London. Picture date: Friday May 22, 2026.
Thomas Tuchel does not strike me as a man who ever watched , but on the evidence of his World Cup selection he’s consumed every episode of it and understands exactly what the English footballing imagination is capable of.
He clearly spent his gardening leave in a darkened room, mainlining nostalgia and cautionary tales. One can only assume the Netflix algorithm served up the Beckham documentary just as the FA’s contract landed on his desk.
Because his squad selection for this summer’s World Cup doesn’t just look like a tactical shift; it looks like a witness protection programme for the soul.
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By jettisoning Cole Palmer, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Phil Foden, Tuchel has performed a radical personality-ectomy. These are the boys of the Golden Generation 2.0 — players who possess the kind of terrifying, individualistic brilliance that makes marketing executives weep with joy and international managers wake up in a cold sweat.
They are the poster boys for a brand of football that prioritises the moment over the matrix.
Tuchel, a man who looks like he treats a misplaced tactical press with the same severity as a mid-air engine failure, has looked at the wreckage of the early 2000s and decided: Nicht für mich, danke.
He remembers, as we all do, an era when England’s midfield was a Venn diagram of egos that refused to overlap.
The days of Gerrard and Lampard, two titan-sized talents who patrolled the pitch like rival princes sharing a single, too-small castle. It was the era of the WAGs in Baden-Baden, of metatarsals becoming front-page news, and of a team so burdened by its own celebrity that it forgot how to shoot straight when a penalty shootout loomed.
In cutting the trio, Tuchel has declared war on the Cult of the Individual. Foden, with the street-baller’s audacity; Trent, with the quarterback’s right boot and the tendency to wander; and Palmer, who plays with the nonchalant ice coldness of a man who hasn’t quite realised he’s playing in a World Cup and not a five-a-side in Wythenshawe.
These are players with personality. And in the sterile, hyper-mapped world of elite modern football, personality is a liability. It is a variable that cannot be tracked by an iPad-wielding analyst in a gilet.
We live in an age of the system. Footballers are now high-performance cogs, conditioned to value structural integrity over the impulse to try a 40-yard worldie.
The modern elite player is a polite, media-trained vessel of platitudes. See the Arsenal players midweek, who, after realising they won the league, were almost forced into performative celebration.
The footage of them emerging from the Emirates at 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning, apparently after celebrating all night, had a whiff of choreography that Nijinsky would be proud of. They all seem like brilliant blokes, but there’s not a maverick amongst them. They are efficient. They are disciplined.
They are, quite frankly, a bit of a bore.
I find myself yearning for the chaos of the fictional Harchester United. Yes, yes, . Remember Luis Amor Rodriguez? The man who eventually retired to return to Argentina to “grow some horses.”
Now there was a man who understood the assignment. Rodriguez didn’t care about low blocks or half-spaces. He carried the entire team, the coaching staff, and half the players’ wives on his back, fueled by pure, unadulterated charisma and perhaps a light dusting of soap-opera melodrama.
He had so much personality he practically leaked it onto the turf of Addison Road.
In the world of , a player’s personal life was as important as his touch. If you weren’t being kidnapped by a disgruntled fan or embroiled in a blackmail plot involving the chairman’s daughter, were you even playing? It was absurd, it was heightened, and it was gloriously human.
Tuchel’s England, by contrast, feels like a spreadsheet come to life.
By removing the poster boys, he has removed the risk of the Golden Generation trap - the snare where the players' fame exceeds the team's function.
He wants a squad of anonymous, high-functioning workers. He wants 11 men who will follow the blueprint until the ink runs dry.
But there is a cost. When you strip away the flair, you strip away the connection. We watch football for the Rodriguez moment - the flashes of individual ego that defy the system.
We watch it for the ice cold Cole Palmers who do something illogical because they have the personality to believe they can.
Tuchel might win this World Cup. He is a pragmatic, Teutonic genius who knows how to grind out results. He might prove that the Golden Generation failure was simply a lack of a firm hand at the tiller.
But as I watch this efficient, personality-free England machine roll across the summer, I’ll be thinking of Luis Amor Rodriguez, a scandalous overhead kick, and a time when football felt a little less like a corporate seminar and a little more like a riot.
He’s avoided the sarong-clad ghost of Beckham and the unpredictability of a thirsty Rooney, sure. But in doing so, Thomas Tuchel might have accidentally invented the most boring team to ever try to win the world over.
Nicht für mich, danke.
It's Eastern Conference Finals time, and the New York Knicks are 3-0 up on the Cleveland Cavaliers. A win tonight would send them to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. Despite being one of the league's most storied franchises, the Knicks have won only two titles, in 1970 and 1973. In recent decades, they've been famous for dysfunction, but thanks to smart coaching and a roster devoid of destructive egos, they are poised to go where no Knicks team has gone this century. No team in NBA history has ever lost a 3-0 lead, but if any franchise could pull it off, it is the Knicks. Should Cleveland win tonight, expect jitters to emerge in Knicks Nation. This is a star-studded nation indeed. The Knicks' re-emergence as a force has made their courtside seating plan read like a Met Gala invitation list: Director Spike Lee, actors Ben Stiller, Tracy Morgan, Anne Hathaway, and Timothée Chalamet, and comics Jon Stewart and Chris Rock. Now, as the eyeballs increase and title talk grows less fanciful, Taylor Swift has emerged as the latest A-lister to declare herself a lifelong Knicks fan. What is much more telling than the celebrity buzz, however, is that every person mentioned is infinitely more recognisable than Jalen Brunson, the hometown, Villanova-schooled point guard. It speaks volumes that Brunson’s humility is often cited as the catalyst for the change in culture at MSG. In July 2024, he signed a $156.5 million extension, leaving roughly $113 million on the table to give the Knicks more flexibility to build a championship roster. Last season, he happily accepted a reduced on-ball role to accommodate teammates, focusing on off-ball play to help the team win. A historic collapse aside, he will lead New York back to the Finals. If he does, the city that never sleeps will be more wide awake than it's been in years.
The death of Frank McGuigan marks the passing of a rare footballing genius, and one of the game’s gentlemen. Revered as one of the game’s most gifted forwards, McGuigan became a Tyrone icon through his skill, fearless attacking play and unforgettable performances. His 11-point masterclass against Armagh in the 1984 Ulster final remains one of the greatest individual displays ever witnessed in the championship. In the often conservative world of the GAA, it was a testament to McGuigan’s personality that he could be nicknamed “The King” and wear such a tag so humbly - and convincingly. McGuigan inspired a generation of footballers and gave Tyrone supporters belief that their county could compete with the best, which they eventually did. Although his career was cruelly shortened by injury, his legacy endured far beyond the pitch. For many, Frank McGuigan represented football at its purest creative, courageous and unforgettable.
The Leinster rugby fraternity will correctly argue that - to win finals, you must first reach them. In an Irish context, Munster’s prolonged transitional period combined with Ulster and Connacht’s European irrelevance means, in the court of domestic opinion, they will always win the argument. But, Saturday's defeat to Bordeaux must reinforce the point that something is off. Culturally, the system-centric style of Leinster’s entire enterprise - from press conferences to their sanitised style of play - has a whiff of the soulless about it. The off-season will tell us whether that affliction is acknowledged or ignored.
