Thomas Tuchel admitted England have “tough learnings” to take from their shock defeat to Senegal.
England were beaten 3-1 by Senegal at the City Ground in Nottingham on Tuesday night in a match where they took an early lead through Harry Kane’s opening goal.
Defeat was all the more disappointing for Tuchel and England in the context that they had spoken about needing a reaction following Saturday’s sluggish 1-0 win over 173rd-ranked Andorra. Instead, they lost to the side ranked 19th in the world, as Senegal beat England for the first time in their history.
England do not play again until September and are just a year away from a World Cup in which they will be considered among the favourites, so the June camp has been damaging for England.
“We lost a test match,” Tuchel insisted afterwards. “There’s no need to panic. We don’t go to the World Cup in a week. We go next year.
“It would have been nice [to win] and then we would have been a step ahead. We now go into a long break with bad feeling and with a loss, which is simply not nice and not what we wanted.
“No, I will never be glad for a loss. I’m glad for tough tests and for challenges. We wanted to feel the quality of a top 20 team. We felt the quality of Senegal and what it means to them.
“We wanted to play better against Andorra. And we wanted to do better today. Not everything was bad. The result was absolutely not what we wanted, but it is a learning — a tough learning.”
Asked how he reflected on his team’s performance, the England manager added: “I felt we were more lively when we were 2-1 behind. Our ball possession was mainly in our own half.
“We had two big chances to go 2-0 up but didn’t take them. It’s our responsibility to lose the match to two very, very cheap goals. I’m not happy with the result.
“We had big problems with one-on-one duels. It took us a long time to step up to the physicality in duels.”
