Tuchel will seek advice from ‘gentleman’ Southgate ahead of World Cup

England drew Serbia and Albania in 2026 qualifying

England team coach Thomas Tuchel, center, arrives on the green carpet before the UEFA Preliminary Draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. (Ennio Leanza/Keystone via AP)

Thomas Tuchel intends to sound out “gentleman” Gareth Southgate and immediate England predecessor Lee Carsley before kicking off the qualification campaign for the 2026 World Cup. The new England head coach has signed an 18-month contract with the Football Association which starts on 1 January, and Tuchel is well aware that his mission is to add a second World Cup star to the England jersey.

Friday’s qualification draw pitted his team against Serbia, Albania, Latvia and Andorra, with the group winners securing an automatic place in the finals in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Tuchel is a hugely-respected club coach but is new to the international arena and confirmed he planned to set aside time to speak to Southgate, who bowed out in the summer after taking England to a second-successive Euros final.

“He’s a gentleman,” Tuchel told Sky Sports News. “We met before when I was at Chelsea and it was a pleasure to talk to him, and why shouldn’t I [meet him again]?” He will also hold talks at St George’s Park next month with Carsley, who took interim charge for England’s Nations League campaign in the autumn. “We will work from January at St George’s and I hope it will become very regular that we will meet and very normal that we meet,” he added.

“Of course we will exchange [ideas] because I’m interested in his point of view about the [squad selection for] the games, about the potential in the group and how he felt about the group and the experiences. He is the under-21 coach, so he will be very, very close to me and we have enough time from January.”

England are set to start their qualification campaign in March and have won every match they have played to date against their Group K opponents. However, Tuchel told BBC Radio 5 Live it was not a given his team would top the group, adding they would need to be “serious” and “determined”.

England have only met Serbia once in their history as a single nation – at this year’s Euros where Jude Bellingham’s goal proved decisive in a group stage encounter. They have won all six previous meetings with Albania – all World Cup qualifiers – and last came across each other in qualifying for the last finals in Qatar. Southgate’s side beat Albania 5-0 at Wembley in November 2021.

Latvia will be new opponents, while Andorra were also in England’s group for qualifying for Qatar. England won the home encounter 4-0 and a 5-0 victory in the return. Asked about facing Serbia and Albania, Tuchel told BBC Radio 5 Live: “They are always very talented individual players, a very emotional group, a very emotional crowd. So they can always surprise. We have to take this very seriously. It’s a first fixture with Latvia, so a new challenge for all of us.

“And then we are clear favourites, of course, against Andorra, but qualification is key now. Qualification is top priority. We have to be serious. We have to be determined, and we have to show what we’re up for in this group of five.”

Tuchel was asked if he was confident of finishing top of the group, and added: “I don’t see it as a given. The gap closes more and more between the big nations and the small nations. You see it in the Euros lately. There are no such thing as results that are already done before the match is played. The smaller nations have become stronger and stronger. So we have to earn our place. We have to earn our top spot.” 

The draw pitted Scotland against Greece, who they face in a two-leg Nations League play-off in March, plus the beaten team in the Portugal v Denmark Nations League quarter-final and Belarus.

Asked about the prospect of playing the same opponents four times in one year, the head coach, Steve Clarke, told BBC Radio 5 Live: “We can treat both a little bit differently. We’ll get to know each other very well I think, so you might find that [by the time of] the World Cup qualifiers, we tend to know each other a little bit better and maybe [they will be] cagey games. But you never know in football, it’s very difficult to gauge how it’s going to be.”

One unknown for Scotland will be the venue for the “away” match against Belarus. They have been barred from playing at home since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which they supported. Northern Ireland played them in Hungary in October. Clarke wants to go “all guns blazing” into the qualifiers, with all six matches in their four-team group crammed into the September, October and November windows.

His Northern Ireland counterpart, Michael O’Neill, welcomed the fact his side’s campaign would not begin until the autumn, when they take on either Germany or Italy, plus Slovakia and Luxembourg. “The four-team groups suit us as a smaller nation and it gives us a lot of time to prepare,” he told the BBC.

“The June fixtures are difficult for us, because we have so many players who play in the EFL and their season finishes so early, like 5 or 6 May, and you’re asking lots [of players] to play in internationals sometimes on 10 or 11 June. So not having that challenge is a good thing for us. We always tend to play our best football in September, October, November, as the Nations League has shown, so we’ll be ready for when the games come around in September.” 

The Wales head coach, Craig Bellamy, was happy to have been placed in a group of five alongside regular recent foes Belgium, plus North Macedonia, Kazakhstan and Liechtenstein. “It gets the competition going really quick, so that’s a real positive,” he said. “It’s a good group, but we’re going to have to do our homework really well and hopefully try and attack it and finish top of the group.” 

Meanwhile, Tuchel believes national team coaches would relish another winter World Cup in Saudi Arabia, but accepted it would be much less popular with clubs and leagues. Tuchel was asked about the prospect of a winter finals in 10 years’ time as he attended the 2026 qualifying draw. He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “We just had a meeting with all the other coaches. I think there is not a decision made, but the coaches who were on international duty in Qatar were very happy about the winter World Cup because players came in November and December, so not after a tiring season but in the middle of it.”

Guardian