The friendly against Ivory Coast was the final dress rehearsal, and now Thomas Tuchel has to stop peering at his clipboard and start making the calls...
The friendly against Ivory Coast was the final dress rehearsal, and now Thomas Tuchel has to stop peering at his clipboard and start making the calls that will define England's World Cup. There is no more room for experiments. The squad is on the plane, but the starting eleven against Croatia on Sunday is a jigsaw that refuses to click into place. This is where the German's famed tactical flexibility will be tested to its breaking point.Let us be brutally honest. England have looked disjointed in these warm up matches, a team caught between the old guard and the new wave. The biggest headache sits in the number 10 position. Jude Bellingham has been carrying this midfield on his back for two years, and his performances for Dortmund scream for a central role where he can drive at defences and break lines. But if you drop Bellingham into the hole, you push Mason Mount into a wider berth or onto the bench, and you alter the balance of the side entirely. It is a high class problem, but a problem nonetheless. Stick him deeper alongside Declan Rice and you risk neutering his greatest weapon, his ability to arrive late in the box.Then there is Bukayo Saka. The Arsenal winger is running hot, a man in the form of his life. He takes on full backs, cuts inside and finishes with a composure that belies his years. You do not leave a player like that on the bench for a World Cup opener. But if Saka starts on the right, where does that leave Phil Foden And if Tuchel wants both of them on the pitch, does that mean Raheem Sterling gets the nod as a false nine over Harry Kane That would be a bold call, one that would have the pub pundits choking on their pints. Kane is the captain, the goal machine, the man who drops deep to orchestrate play. You don't drop him. You build around him.The real question, the one that will keep Tuchel up at night, is whether he trusts his system more than his individuals. Croatia are no mugs. They have Luka Modric pulling the strings in a low block, a team that specialises in transitional play and making you pay for one moment of slackness. England cannot afford to be ponderous. The full backs need to provide width, the midfield needs to be aggressive in the press, and the front line needs clinical finishing. If Tuchel overcomplicates it, if he tries to be too clever with his shape, England will toil.My gut says we see a hybrid. Bellingham starts as the number 10 but with a roving brief to drop deep and combine with Rice when England are building from the back. Saka starts on the right, because you play your in form players. Foden on the left, cutting onto his right foot. And Harry Kane up top, dropping into the pockets of space Modric vacates when he goes forward. It is not a revolution. It is a pragmatic solution to a complex equation. But in the cauldron of a World Cup group stage, pragmatism often beats romance. Let the squeaky bum time begin.
