Thomas Tuchel says he has the ‘belief’ and ‘excitement’ that England can progess ‘a long way’ through the World Cup 2026 this summer as the squad prepare to fly to the United States ahead of the start of the tournament.
England will travel to Miami in Florida today for a pre-camp and two warm-up matches before relocating to the team’s permanent tournament base in Kansas City on Saturday 13 June.
Having named his 26-man squad for the competition over a week ago, the England boss has been finalising details for the World Cup and preparing England’s plans to make it through the tourament.
In an interview with Sky Sports, Tuchel said: “When I reconnected with the games, built our training sessions, built our meetings to reconnect the team in Florida with what we’ve built already I saw a lot of quality and that is what gave me the full belief and excitement that we can go a long way.”
He added: “Things like the last three days, difficult phone calls, big phone calls, positive phone calls, and the reactions of the players just tells you that we have a connection already. It tells me that they care, there were beautiful, touching reactions even from players who were not called up, wishing us all the best and they way they reacted tells me that we are on the right way.
“That gets me personally excited to be close, I can’t wait to be on the plane, look over my shoulder and have finally a team behind me, arrive in Florida and do what I love the most: be a coach.”
The England boss was also asked how he and his staff have planned for the high temperatures expected during the World Cup and he explained that would not use that as an excuse not to perform.
open image in gallery“It is not our biggest enemy but it is not to our advantage after a long and very demanding season for our players,” Tuchel said. “We’re not used to being in this type of heat and humidity and even like the altitude if you play Mexico in Mexico.
“A lot of challenges in this World Cup, the heat is one of them, we are prepared already, we know the players reaction to the heat, we have cooling strategies in place, we had help from Team GB, we had help from specialists all over the world to come up with solutions to help the players to adapt.
“The reality is the first game is indoors and the AC is on so it should not be a problem. From there we have to adapt, it is a factor but it should not come across that already we are making excuses, it’s just not in our favour and is another obstacle to overcome.”
England begin their World Cup campaign against Croatia on 17 June before fixtures against Ghana and Panama.