GERMAN sparks 'humiliating farce' as players withdraw...

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Remember when England players never withdrew from international duty under Gareth Southgate? Blame Thomas Tuchel…

England apocalypse now

Harry Kane’s sulkiness about so many of his England teammates pulling out of international duty through injury has given the po-faced column writers carte blanche to tut and mutter about how this would have never happened under Gareth Southgate.

Except it did happen under Gareth Southgate, of course. And particularly in this November international break when there’s no international tournament the following summer. It’s a tale as old as time.

Indeed, Lee Carsley said this week: “November is a challenging window, in the past we’ve had eight or nine call-offs. I know the Under-21s and Under-20s have had a lot of players pull out as well, so I think it’s definitely that period of the season.”

Just three years ago, there were seven England withdrawals from the November camp to face Albania and San Marino, resulting in England facing the latter with Tyrone Mings, Conor Coady and Emile Smith Rowe, with Conor Gallagher making his debut off the bench.

On that particular night – which resulted in a 10-0 win – Jason Burt of the Daily Telegraph was hailing the performances of the ‘young tyros’. But that was England under Southgate so fast-forward three years and this is the headline on Burt’s piece:

Gareth Southgate took years to build a positive culture – England destroyed it in months

That seems like an entirely rational reaction to a collection of overworked players pulling out of an international squad.

There is no need to dig too deep – or dig at all – to feel Kane’s frustration. There is little to decode from his words. It is clear what he means. He has called it as he sees it and there is no doubting the implication: Southgate worked hard to create the right competitive culture with England, one in which even injured players turned up just to be part of it, and it is now in danger of being compromised.

They largely ‘turned up just to be part of it’ because England played in an unprecedented three major tournaments in the space of three years.

But in November 2021 there were seven withdrawals and in March 2022 there were another six withdrawals. Almost like that’s perfectly normal when players are picking up an unusual number of injuries and there is no imminent major tournament.

No one is saying that the players who have dropped out of Carsley’s original 26-man squad have not done so for genuine reasons. But nine? Would that be the case – it must be asked – had Tuchel taken the squad as he should have done and the road to the next World Cup started here?

Maybe one or two players might have battled through, but Jack Grealish would still have argued that he has not played football in almost a month, Jarrad Branthwaite would have still only played two full Premier League games all season, Aaron Ramsdale would still have a broken finger and Arsenal would have undoubtedly still protected Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka after they were forced off v Chelsea.

Also – and we do keep coming back to this – why the f*** does it matter?

We are over 18 months from the start of the World Cup in 2026. England’s chances of winning that tournament will not be remotely altered by the fact that Levi Colwill has pulled out of a Nations League game in November 2024. Not remotely.

But apparently ‘there may also be a knock-on effect to England’s qualification campaign and when those games can be scheduled and plans to play two friendlies in the United States to help prepare of the World Cup’ if England end up in a Nations League play-off, and we all know that playing two friendlies in the United States will definitely make a vast difference to England’s finances chances of winning the World Cup.

So Greece away and the Republic of Ireland at Wembley really do matter.

Now try and convince anybody not currently in Athens in an England bubble.

A Tuch of class

The MailOnline have gone even further:

Club vs country is back with a vengeance after FA chiefs turned changing of the guard from Southgate to Tuchel into a humiliating farce. We’re like a pub team, writes OLIVER HOLT

And Holt is seemingly apoplectic that the man who will manage England from January 1 will not be in Greece in November.

When England arrived in the Greek capital on Wednesday evening in the midst of their own changing of the guard, the new figurehead of the national team was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t a surprise: the FA have been absurdly business-as-usual about the fact that neither they nor their new coach thought it important for him to be here for this Nations League tie. Tuchel was announced as England’s new boss last month but he did not take training for the first game since his appointment as Gareth Southgate’s permanent replacement. He did not pick the team, either. Nor it is said will he seek to influence caretaker manager Lee Carsley’s selection in any way. Nor will he bother to attend the game in the Olympic Stadium on Thursday night.

Erm, he’s not the England manager yet. Taking training before he is the England manager would be mental. As would ‘seeking to influence’ the actual caretaker boss in any way.

The FA and Tuchel himself were very clear that the new England manager wanted to start his tenure after the Nations League games for which Carsley was appointed.

Did Holt think Manchester City were ‘absurd’ when Pep Guardiola did not immediately take over in February 2016 and instead allowed Manuel Pellegrini to finish the Premier League season?

Everyone seems to be presuming that he will watch the match on television somewhere but who knows? Maybe he’s got dinner plans. Perhaps he’s promised to take the dog for a walk. It is all very manana, isn’t it. All terribly relaxed.

We think he will probably watch, Oliver. Just as Guardiola probably watched City when he wasn’t in charge.

The party line is that Tuchel is the kind of fast-twitch coach who simply doesn’t need to start getting England’s players used to his style and his philosophy just yet.

Well he did win the Champions League just a few months after taking over from Frank bloody Lampard.

The party line is he doesn’t need to waste his time with occasions like Greece-England. He’ll start in January, breeze through the qualifiers, win the World Cup and get out.

Pretty sure that’s not the ‘party line’, fella. That’s you being facetious. We get it. We like it.

But the inconvenient truth is that they have turned England’s changing of the guard from Southgate to Tuchel into a humiliating farce.

Genuinely, have they balls. Or at least not to anybody not in this ridiculous bubble where anybody gives a shiny about England between major tournaments.

Carsley is just one of the casualties of the FA’s apparent desire to get Tuchel at any cost. Another is the demeaning of the value of an England cap. There was a time when they were hard to win, when they were cherished, when they had value, but some of that has been lost in the risible way the FA have handled the appointment of Tuchel. There have been times during the last few days, as the epidemic of withdrawals has taken hold, when it has felt as though we are one step away from dragging people off the streets to get them to play.

Just for fun, let’s look at an inexhaustive list of players who have been capped by Gareth Southgate: Nathaniel Chalobah, Jack Cork, Eddie Nketiah, Nathan Redmond, James Justin, Alex McCarthy, Patrick Bamford, Ben Godfrey, James Tarkowski, Tyrick Mitchell, Aaron Cresswell, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Jake sodding Livermore.

And you want to talk about a ‘humiliating farce’ that has ‘demeaned the value of an England cap’.

Mediawatch preferred it when the Mail admitted their only real objection to Thomas Tuchel was the fact that he is GERMAN.

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