Thomas Tuchel insisted England should not panic over their World Cup prospects despite being humbled 3-1 by Senegal one year and one day before the tournament starts.
Tuchel suffered the first defeat of his reign at the City Ground and England their first loss to African opposition in 22 matches as Senegal ran out deserving 3-1 winners. Jude Bellingham had a goal controversially disallowed at 2-1 but, after the laboured win against Andorra in World Cup qualifying on Saturday, there was no disguising the paucity of England’s latest performance under their German coach. England were booed off for the second game in succession.
The England head coach, however, insisted improvement would come and it was premature to worry about the World Cup one year in advance. “We lost a test match so there is no need to panic,” said Tuchel.
“We have three qualification games, we have nine points, we have not conceded and we will be competitive in September and we will go for two more victories, 100%. We know more now, we are smarter. It is tough at the moment. I am the first one to dislike and hate losses but we don’t go next week, we go in one year and I think by nature it will get more competitive in the nomination process and in the demands for players to be nominated and to be with us in September, October, November because we are in a World Cup season.”
Tuchel defended his decision to leave Ivan Toney on the bench until the 88th minute, explaining the striker was at his best inside the box and England were not close enough to it when he brought on Morgan Rogers instead. But he conceded the defeat, plus two poor performances, would leave a bad feeling throughout the summer.
Tuchel said: “Now we go into a long break with a bad feeling and a loss which is simply not nice and not what we wanted. I will never be glad for a loss. I’m glad for a tough test and challenges. We wanted to feel the quality of a top-20 team and we felt their quality. We felt what it means to them. I heard them in the dressing room before the match, I heard them in the dressing room after the match so I know how much it means to them to play against us. How much joy they expressed if they make this happen.
“It’s the right thing to test, the right thing to challenge. Of course we demand a lot of ourselves and I demand more of myself, we wanted to play better against Andorra, and do better today. It is a tough learning.”
Harry Kane, who opened the scoring, accepted that the performance fell below their standards and was “not good enough”. Speaking to ITV, the England captain said: “We had moments, but with and without the ball things aren’t clicking, we’re not finding the right tempo. We’ve lost that aggressive nature that we had.
“We’re not going to panic but we know we need to be better. New ideas, there’s new players coming into the team that don’t have experience at international level. It’s a mixture of things but no excuses. We need to find it quick, the World Cup is going to come around really fast so every camp is really important right now.”
