Four tactical lessons we learned from Tuchel's first games

Home games against the low blocks of nations ranked 65th and 140th in the world are always going to be a bit of a slog.

The Premier League intensity Thomas Tuchel hopes to implement won't happen overnight, nor will it happen in draining matches against ultra-defensive opposition.

But while England's competent if unspectacular wins against Albania and Latvia looked suspiciously like any Gareth Southgate qualifier of the past eight years, under the bonnet there were clues that a more detailed tactical plan is in the pipeline.

Here are four tactical lessons we learnt from Tuchel's first England games.

The first thing to note about Tuchel is his open discussion of tactical ideas.

Between the two matches the German pondered aloud whether a 4-1-4-1 formation would "give us enough control" or if modern football is too "fluid" for Rice alone at the base, whether "it would be the right thing to play in a very traditional 4-4-2 as an English national team", and whether using two 10s would mean his "real wingers" would "suffer".

Those news conferences have given rise to the nickname 'Tommy Tactics' - a moniker that highlights a sharp turn from Southgate, often criticised for his lack of tactical acumen.

That's encouraging, although for all Tuchel's talk he was still left surprised by how sluggish his team looked and how infrequently they risked cutting lines.

"We started a little bit too slow, slowing the game down and playing too much without movement - which makes no sense," Tuchel said after the Latvia game. "We didn't want to do this."

After Albania: "At the moment I'm not so sure why we struggled to bring the ball quicker to [the wingers], to bring the ball in more [of an] open position to them. I need to review the match."

England fell far short of where Tuchel wants them to be, and although this is partly about "the identity, the clarity, the rhythm, the repetition of patterns, the freedom of player, the expression of player, the hunger" – Tuchel's description of what beaten finalists England lacked at Euro 2024 – it is also about discovering the right tactical system.

The first tentative steps were made this week.

In both of England's matches the standout feature was the configuration of central midfield.

Against Albania, England began with Curtis Jones and Jude Bellingham high up the pitch as number eights with Declan Rice at the base: a triangle shape more aggressive than Southgate's tendency to use two holding players.

Jones was replaced by Morgan Rogers for the Latvia win, but with Miles Lewis-Skelly inverted into central midfield this created a box-shape midfield of Lewis-Skelly and Rice at the base and Bellingham and Rogers in front.

There were big differences between those two formations – between what we might call a 4-1-4-1 and a 3-4-2-1; a triangle and a square in the middle - but it's important to note that both contained dual number 10s and the diamond-shaped attacking structure as seen in Tuchel's training sessions.

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In the first instance, Jones shuttled up and down while Bellingham had a looser role, dropping deep (as he did to assist Lewis-Skelly's opener) or making runs beyond Harry Kane.

In the second, Rogers added drive in possession and functioned more like a traditional 10, demanding the ball between the lines and freeing Bellingham to make runs into the left channel in support of Marcus Rashford.

The change might seem subtle, but it's an important peek into the future.

The days of two anchors at the base of midfield are over. Tuchel wants to get two of England's 10s into the team and field an ambitious, vertically-inclined midfield.

But of course to field two 10s is to potentially overwork Declan Rice, which is why we saw Tuchel experimenting with what to do at the base.

In the first game he relied on Jones dropping back at the right moment, and revealed: "There was a lot of invisible work to do for Curtis, for second balls and to play as a double six against the ball." He then switched Lewis-Skelly into a midfield role in the second half, where he remained for the Latvia win.

Considering the Arsenal left-back scored the first goal of the Tuchel era with the kind of incisive forward run England lacked (more on that below), to subsequently limit Lewis-Skelly's forward movement spoke volumes - as did the use of Reece James in a similarly inverted role in the second half.

"If you play a dominant match [James] can be, like in the last 20, a hybrid midfielder and help to create an overload because he has the quality on the ball," Tuchel said after the game.

"Once it's an open game [with] a lot of transitions through midfield I'm not so sure it would suit him perfectly."

That's a key line.

In trying the box-midfield, and in trying Lewis-Skelly and James as inverted full-backs, Tuchel shows he is already thinking about how to create a dynamic, full-throttle England attack without leaving his team too open to opposition counter-attacks.

Defensive transitions will only become an issue in important late-stage World Cup matches, when Tuchel's high-intensity approach will need to be properly screened.

That he is already concerned tells us his focus is firmly on summer 2026.

"We hope for more impact in these [winger] positions," was Tuchel's most-quoted line from the victory over Albania. "More dribbling and more aggressive runs towards the box. In general that was missing. The chances come from the little runs behind the line. They were not as decisive as they can be."

He demanded more from Rashford and Phil Foden, and against Latvia he got it. Rashford created six chances and attempted 11 crosses, despite running the left flank on his own.

On the other side Jarred Bowen struggled but Rogers, moved out to the right in the second half, did well. "Once we put him on the wing, he felt a bit more freedom in the first touches and he can work his way into his dynamic movements," said Tuchel.

Eberechi Eze, too, came off the bench and scored following a "dynamic movement" to use Tuchel's phrase.

Nevertheless Tuchel wanted his wingers to be more direct and take on the full-backs, revealing a crucial tactical shift from the Southgate era.

"We lacked runs off the ball. It was a little bit too much passing, not enough dribbling, not aggressive enough towards goal," he said after the win over Albania.

This line sums up Tuchel's most important demand: possession with purpose; a constant desire to burst beyond the defensive line.

However, for the most part England's wingers looked isolated, mimicking the way Manchester City's wingers have come unstuck this season without overlapping full-backs to draw attention.

Herein lies Tuchels' first great conundrum: sacrifice full-backs to secure midfield and England will be stronger defending counters, but at the cost of leaving the wingers with too much to do.

Bellingham's runs down the left against Latvia showed how dual number 10s can help relieve that pressure on the wingers, and yet England's clogged-up midfield still clashed with Latvia's ultra-narrow 5-4-1 to create a claustrophobic game.

The solution, Tuchel might argue, is in freeing all players to make surprise runs in behind, like Lewis-Skelly's for the opener against Albania or Rice's for Kane's goal against Latvia.

Bursts beyond, charging at defenders, moving in straight lines: this is the verticality Tuchel has always required of his teams and, in broad terms, is the defining departure from Southgate's conservatism.