Who is Thomas Tuchel, the England coach who keeps fighting his own players?
Jude Bellingham had just scored both of England’s goals in a bad-tempered 2-1 extra-time win over Norway. It sent the team into the World Cup semi-final, the first goal standing despite Norwegian protests it struck an overhead camera cable in the build-up. Thomas Tuchel (pronounce: Toe-mazs Too-kh-uhl) in the post-match interview, called the win “lucky” and the performance “sloppy.” Told what his manager had said, Bellingham didn’t dress it up. “Maybe he doesn’t know what it’s like to play in those kind of conditions against Erling Haaland, Ødegaard, Nusa, Sørloth,” he said. It wasn’t the first time. Tuchel had already apologised once for describing Bellingham’s on-field behaviour as “repulsive.” “If he smiles, he wins everyone,” he’d said. “But sometimes you see the rage, the hunger and the fire and it comes out in a way that can be a bit repulsive, for example, for my mother when she sits in front of the TV,” calling him, in the same breath, “a special boy.” The German coach later said he’d used the word “unintentionally,” in his …
