Thomas Tuchel's flawed England squad construction is threatening their World Cup chances
As they schlep their way through a World Cup campaign that had started in such exemplary fashion, England are learning a lesson that many of their head coach's previous employers would have been happy to share for them. For all the many qualities of Thomas Tuchel, the head coach, not all of which were shining through in the 2-1 win over DR Congo, Tuchel the squad builder is not such a slam dunk.
That is something of a problem when your team, unlike all the others, does not have any checks and balances on how your roster is constructed because, well, it's international management. They stopped doing the whole selection by committee thing back in the 1960s. Your team, your rules, your problem when it goes wrong. And it really did come close to going very dramatically wrong in a way that would have surely have gone down as a failing of Tuchel.
It was not that Djed Spence, seemingly England's fifth-choice right back, was necessarily at fault for Brian Cipenga's opener. It was that it seemed inevitable the fault would come in that spot, where so much has been gambled on the fitness of Reece James. For years, Tuchel has been warning that tournament football is different, that one mistake can derail a promising campaign. You can almost see in his mind's eye that moment Trent Alexander-Arnold switched off in the 2022 Champions League final and Vinicius Junior beat Liverpool at the back post.
It is innate within Tuchel that he looks to mitigate against such risks. It is what makes him such an outstanding coach in knockout football, that he can grasp hold of a Chelsea side who seem to be going nowhere fast and turn them for a fleeting moment into one of the greatest defensive outfits European club football had seen for a generation. At their best, his teams see every risk coming a mile off. How then, could this manager respond to James suffering a hamstring injury by saying "no-one could see that coming." The sad reality of James' recent career is you could set your watch by his body failing him.
Inside 'football nerd' Thomas Tuchel's rise from German fifth-tier to leader of England's World Cup dreams James Benge
Even now, after they survived such an almighty scare, the squad which he announced a month ago and has had an opportunity to hone since threatens to be Tuchel's folly. The 52-year-old has left him overstocked in positions he is not using, scrabbling around for what he can get elsewhere, all while having only afforded himself few players who might really shake up his side.
Right back is the immediate crisis because, of course, he should have readied himself for a James injury. If Tino Livramento or Ben White had made it to June 17 in one piece, then perhaps it would have been justifiable to eschew the talents of Alexander-Arnold, which are numerous and dramatically raise a team's ceiling but are best expressed in a way that requires covering from others. When neither of those two were available, it seemed obvious that Real Madrid's right back would be a better choice than a repurposed Bayer Leverkusen center back or a Tottenham utility guy.
There are positions where there is not that much sense worrying about your cover. If Declan Rice goes down in the knockout stages England are in such deep trouble that it does not really matter who you have backing him up. Jordan Henderson is, by all accounts, a good tourist. Why not go for him? The same might also be true of Dan Burn, another well-regarded member of the camp, but after Trevoh Chalobah was called up to replace Livramento, England find themselves with six options at center back when fully fit and yet so pressed at right back that they're having to shuffle Rice out there at the death against DR Congo.
Bringing three strikers made sense if one of them was to be Ivan Toney, the archetypal big man to cause chaos in the mixer when nothing else would break down a low block. Perhaps the Al-Ahli striker would have been the next man up if Kane hadn't turned the tide with 15 minutes to go. Still, England have had three games where they have had work to do prising apart an opponent in the second half, Toney has played no minutes and Ollie Watkins only six as Kane's replacement when Panama were beaten.
This isn't even solving for problems that haven't presented themselves yet. Tuchel has given himself options; he just has not used them. Meanwhile, four wide options look one too few when Bukayo Saka is not being selected to play three games in eight days. Was the trio of Anthony Gordon, Noni Madueke and Marcus Rashford a little too one-note? These were wingers selected for when space opens up against more ball-dominant opponents but perhaps not with enough consideration as to who was going to find the gaps in the opponents earlier in the tournament.
This lopsided squad has the air of the head coach who went to war with the Bayern Munich hierarchy because they would not bequeath a Joao Palhinha on him, who insisted that Paris Saint-Germain furnish him with Julian Weigl and who convinced himself that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang would get Chelsea firing days before he himself was fired. England's is a squad that, with the possible exception of Toney, is built to Tuchel's specifications. His defenders ought to be more versatile and agile than they are showing, his midfield prizes strength and verticality over elan and his attackers suit Harry Kane.
There was logic in that approach, certainly more than Gareth Southgate's 11th-hour conviction that it was the job of the England manager to jam the maximum number of club superstars on the pitch at any one time. It is just an approach that, in retrospect, has been taken to an extreme. When there is space for three outfield players, why not give yourself insurance for your relatively injury-prone player and add a few profiles that you would not naturally gravitate towards?
Even in this most trying of triumphs, there was a case to be made for Tuchel the coach. When he got his hands on his players at the hydration breaks, what followed was an immediate and pronounced uptick in performance. Playing Rice as a quasi-right back with a real license to bomb on was a shrewd move, one vindicated as he made an out-of-in run to the byline that allowed him to deliver the cross before the cross from which Kane nodded home the equalizer.
Tuchel, the coach, has such a track record of excellence in knockout games that he can be trusted to work around constraints that emerge on the pitch and off it as well as anyone. It is just a pity for England that so many of the binds their manager found himself in were those he made for himself.
Add CBS Sports on GoogleMeet Melat Kiros, the Ethiopian-born anti-Israel socialist crusader who is DSA’s rising star after stunning upset in Colorado
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Politics
Meet Melat Kiros, the Ethiopian-born anti-Israel socialist crusader who is DSA’s rising star after stunning upset in Colorado
By Ryan King Published July 1, 2026, 2:06 p.m. ETSee more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on GoogleWASHINGTON — Democratic socialism is spreading West.
Political newcomer Melat Kiros, 29, who took down 15-term Democratic incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Col.) in a stunning primary upset Tuesday, is riding a wave of anti-Israel and anti-ICE sentiment sweeping her party.
The Ethiopian-born PhD student has pushed to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), suggested that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks were “inevitable,” downplayed suggestions that a firebombing of a Jewish rally was an act of antisemitism, and more.
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Once in the House of Representatives, which is considered likely because she’s in a safe blue district, Kiros has vowed to push Democrats as far left as possible and to oppose Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) becoming speaker.
Political awakening
Kiros refined many of her far-left views in law school at Notre Dame in the early 2020s, a period she describes as her political awakening, as the country was roiled by the COVID-19 pandemic and peak wokeness.
“I literally watched the Federalist Society handpicking some of my classmates onto the judge track in their decades-long bid to pack the courts,” she complained, according to Vox. “…I just lost faith in the system; I think a lot of young people did.”
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After law school in 2022, she joined the law firm Sidley Austin in New York, where she worked as a regulatory and enforcement associate. The following year, she was fired for writing a viral open letter lambasting law firms for pushing to crack down on antisemitism on college campuses.
“By chilling future lawyers’ employment prospects for criticism of the Israeli government’s actions and its legitimacy, you are complicit in Israel’s weaponization of anti-Semitism against legitimate concerns for the right of self-determination and the livelihood of the Palestinian people,” she wrote in the missive.
Sidley Austin demanded she take the letter down, but Kiros claims she refused and was fired as a result.
“I didn’t flinch because I stood by every word and I always will,” she boasted during her victory speech Tuesday.
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That move drew headlines and boosted her name recognition in lefty circles.
After losing her law gig, Kiros moved back to Colorado, where her family had immigrated while she was just 11-months-old. Her father had been picked in America’s Diversity Visa Lottery, per her campaign website.
Back home, she enrolled in a PhD program in public policy and worked as a barista.
Then, in the middle of last year, she decided to launch a seemingly long-shot primary challenge against DeGette, who is widely considered to be a very progressive lawmaker and has served in Congress longer than Kiros has been alive.
DeGette had the backing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
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But Kiros’ candidacy caught fire with the DSA and other lefty groups that were hunting for candidates to take on incumbent Democrats and push the party further leftwards.
One of the major differences between the two was Kiros’ tougher stance against Israel. DeGette faced grassroots pushback for supporting defensive aid to Israel.
Kiros, however, made tough talk against the Jewish state a feature of her campaign.
For example, she told notorious lefty streamer Hasan Piker that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack was an “inevitable consequence of apartheid,” though she later clarified she wasn’t trying to say it was justified.
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Piker is a very controversial streamer, having declared that “America deserved 9/11″ and praised the “brave mujahideen” who injured Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas).
In a similar vein, she told 9News journalist Kyle Clark that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were an “inevitable consequence” of US foreign policy.
Kiros has stirred local controversy for downplaying the role of antisemitism in the June 1, 2025, firebombing attack at a weekly Jewish gathering aimed at bringing attention to the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. One person was killed and a dozen were injured in that attack.
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The attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, screamed “Free Palestine” before later stating that he “wanted to kill all Zionist people,” according to the FBI.
Kiros repeatedly declined to call it antisemitism and told NOTUS that it wasn’t “entirely obvious that it was just motivated by antisemitism.”
Many of her positions are similar to those of other DSA members, including support for Medicare for All, a modified Green New Deal, and mass amnesty. Kiros also wants a 10% slash in Pentagon spending.
“People are seeing that capitalism is responsible for a lot of the degradation that we’re seeing in our economy, that we’re seeing in our democracy, that we’re certainly seeing in our climate as well,” she claimed in a recent interview.
“They’re demanding a new way to organize our economy.”
Should she win in November, she will be the first Gen. Z woman to serve in Congress and the second Zoomer overall, after Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.)
She is riding a socialist revolt within the Democratic Party, as far-left candidates have won primaries across New York, Maine, Illinois, and elsewhere heading into the midterms.
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