October 17, 2024 - 11:55am
The appointment of Thomas Tuchel as England manager has been a shock to the system for many football fans. A foreign candidate for the national team is always a difficult sell. A German specifically takes that to a whole new level, given the longstanding footballing rivalry between the two countries. But Tuchel will be intensely committed to the job, not despite being German but because he is German.
Predictably, the outrage following the announcement was loud in some corners of the British Press. âA dark day for Englandâ, declared The Daily Mail, adding: âWe are the laughing stock of the world game.â Gary Lineker said with a wry smile that âhaving a German coach is interestingâ, and admitted that Tuchel would not have been his first choice.
For many people in England, the very idea of having a German manager is anathema. The German national team remains the arch-enemy even if the media has toned down the war jokes a bit. Headlines like âLetâs Blitz Fritzâ (The Sun, 1996) may be gone. But Lineker hasnât forgotten the pain of moments such as the 1990 World Cup, which West Germany won after beating England on penalties in the semi-final â and neither have fans.
Even if few of the critics of Tuchelâs appointment would explicitly name their concerns, at the core is the doubt that a German manager could ever truly want England to win, given how much emotion is tangled up in this footballing rivalry. As understandable as this is from an English point of view, itâs not how Tuchel will view his role.
The footballing rivalry between England and Germany has always been lopsided. After all, the pain was mostly one-sided, too. Yes, there is the 1966 World Cup final, which West Germany lost to England, but few people in Germany feel actively aggrieved about that. Whatever the current problems of the German national team, it can still boast four World Cups and three European Championships in its history.
Germany has been runner-up the same number of times in each tournament, but these near-misses take on a different context in light of the comparatively regular wins. The agony over them also spreads across different teams. Growing up in Germany in the Nineties and early 2000s, I most vividly remember the Netherlands being among Germanyâs favourite football enemies, possibly because the Dutch won the 1988 European Championship final in West Germany after beating the hosts in a tense semi-final.
At the time, Tuchel was a 14-year-old youth footballer for FC Augsburg in Bavaria. He grew up in a country with a deep passion for football, but crucially not in an atmosphere that brought painful footballing memories involving the England team. England was and still is seen there as a worthy adversary, a fellow footballing nation.
Tuchel will therefore not approach his new job with a âtake-the-money-and-runââ attitude, as The Daily Mail has suggested. The England team is currently one of the best in the world, and heâll consider it not only an honour to coach its players but also a thrilling challenge to see if he can lead them to victory.
It is true that it seems unthinkable in turn for the German team to take on a foreign manager. Youâd get much the same outrage, perhaps even stronger. Unlike England, which has had two foreign managers before in Sven-Göran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, the German team has never been led by a non-German. But there are good reasons for this. In Germany, international football trumps the domestic league in the footballing hierarchy. The current national coach, Julian Nagelsmann, had previously been at Bayern Munich with an impressive win rate of 71.4% but chose to become manager of the German national team rather than go on to another top club. His successor at Bayern, Tuchel, took the England job despite also having been approached by Manchester United.
By contrast, most English managers would want to pursue a club career first. For instance, Eddie Howe â one of the English candidates â still has great ambitions for and with Newcastle United. For Germans, by contrast, international football is the pinnacle. From Tuchel’s perspective, managing the England team is as close as it gets to a top job.
Whether Tuchel will be able to click with the team and fans remains to be seen. But we certainly shouldnât doubt his commitment to take them to the top.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.
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SubscribeMy immediate thought in jest is “Does Cpl.Jones know about this?” Seriously though, he sounds like a good coach and hopefully will be a good England manager.
Who cares provided he can actually manage and produce results? However he may not fully realise how loaded with poison that chalice is…
Compared to the ocean of poison available at Man United, the England scenario is a mere trickle by comparison.
About time we simply acknowledge the German’s have succeeded much better at this game than us since 1966, even when they competed with half a country! It’s a results game and he’ll be judged on that hopefully not on his passport or ‘Germanness’ – maybe some bigotry might disappear too if he does well – I mean Klopp was well liked outside Liverpool for what he did and how he was as a man I say that as an Everton fan who he managed to rile on many an occasion!
You could pronounce Tuchel “Tutchell” and pretend that it was English. But the Patron of the Football Association is Prince William, and his real surname is Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-GlĂŒcksburg. Good luck with that.
The tabloids are going to have fun with this.
Honestly, describing England and Germany as having a football rivalry is being very generous to England. I feel like it is more like that meme from Mad Men with the Germans as Don Draper saying “I don’t think about you at all.”
âturning down the Manchester Untied jobâ merely demonstrates that Tuchel isnât an idiot.
This move is completely inappropriate, illegitimate, and totally representative of Starmer’s UK.In modern football, the coach is 12th player despite not being on the field.
No developed nation should have a foreign head coach. While this particular article is about football and not politics, this is an umpteenth example of the post-national mindset of ruling classes.
You jest, yes?
Half.
Should a national team be allowed to field foreign players ?
That horse bolted years ago.
Plenty already do. Look at the Republic of Ireland in the 80s and 90s – they played anyone with even the most tenuous claim to being Irish. Even Italy have fielded Brazilians (take Eder who first played for Brazil and later Italy).
Then take a look at national cricket and rugby union teams. Or athletics. Nationality is little more than self-identification there.
Yes, much as I, an Irish rugby fan who lived through the Dark Ages of the 1990s, enjoy the current performances of the Ireland rugby team, the truth is without a few judicious recruitments from New Zealand, etc, we’d not be nearly as good. (Although we’d still be considerably better than the team in the 90s thanks to the Dublin private schools player pipeline that exists now).
I am honestly at a complete loss as to what the problem is. Heâs a good manager and coach and it was time for a change from the one dimensional Southgate. Iâm amazed he even wanted this poison chalice but Iâm thankful he did.
Heâs German. So what? I mean really, so what?
Good point about Holland being a more bitter rival for the Germans than England. I sense there’s more mutual respect between Germany and England than between the Dutch and Germans.
And we can agree with Germany on both wanting to beat Argentina.
Other things being equal, I’d prefer an England manager. But I’d much rather have someone who plays to win, rather than not to lose (like Southgate).
I believe in the past Italians and Swedes were appointed.
I do find the prospect slightly irritating, that if we did win the World Cup theyâd still be able to say – âyes but you couldnât do it without Germanyâ