Not long after England’s friendly match with New Zealand in Tampa had ended on Saturday evening, Thomas Tuchel was talking with reporters in the area outside the changing room at the Raymond James Stadium.
He was asked about Jude Bellingham and whether he would start England’s opening game of this World Cup against Croatia in Dallas next week.
‘He’s one of the starters,’ Tuchel said, ‘he knows that.’ And for a moment, he paused. Maybe he just wanted to survey the expressions on the faces of his audience. He knows that the question of whether Bellingham or Morgan Rogers should start at No 10 is something that splits opinion. This was a tease.
‘He’s one of the starters,’ Tuchel continued, ‘but there are 14, 15 potential starters. And then there’s a special group and then there’s a leadership group and then there are guys who finish matches for us and get the energy right and have more the role of setting the standards. In my head there are 15, 14 proper starters and Jude is one of them.’
If it sometimes seems the debate over whether it should be Rogers or Bellingham who starts against Croatia has become an obsession, it is because it is a debate that goes to the heart of Tuchel’s management strategy and how he is trying to shape a style and a team spirit that can help England win the World Cup for the first time in 60 years.
Rogers and Bellingham are old friends and they are both sublime players in their different ways but for the majority of his time in charge of England, Tuchel has put his faith in Rogers and Rogers has delivered for him. He has developed a good on-field understanding with Harry Kane. Rogers appears to bring the best out of the England skipper, too.
England boss Thomas Tuchel has appeared to have a slightly strained relationship with Jude Bellingham at times. He referred to Bellingham’s on-pitch antics as ‘repulsive’ a year ago
But Bellingham brings both quality and a history of delivering when needed, such as his last-minute equaliser against Slovakia in Euro 2024 (pictured)
But part of what makes the debate so enthralling is that it has often been framed as a duel between a man, in Rogers, who is a team player and a rival, in Bellingham, who is all about the cult of the individual and whose body language sometimes seems to suggest he regards his team-mates with scorn.
It is Tuchel who is largely responsible for that framing. It was Tuchel who referred to Bellingham’s on-pitch antics as ‘repulsive’ a year ago. The England manager subsequently apologised for his remark but the impression has remained that he is worried Bellingham might be a negative influence on team spirit in the pressure-cooker of a World Cup.
That’s why this decision is so loaded. If Bellingham starts in Dallas, some will interpret that as Tuchel backing down. Some will say that when it came to the crunch, Tuchel rowed back on his homilies about team spirit and bowed to the star power of the Real Madrid midfielder.
There will be more searching for clues when Tuchel names his side for England’s final warm-up game against Costa Rica in Orlando on Wednesday evening but whoever starts and whoever is sitting on the bench, the wondering and the speculating about who gets the nod in Dallas is likely to go down to the wire.
Tuchel has built this squad around the idea that it is not about star-power but that it is about the team. It is not about egos but about the collective. If he is convinced that Bellingham has understood that, if he has seen the evidence of that since England have arrived in the USA, then it is hard to see Bellingham being left out of the starting XI.
It is time for Tuchel to stop playing games with Bellingham now. The manager has had the chances he needed to establish his authority over the player and he has taken them. He has made his point about his attitude to his team-mates. Once he picked him in the squad, it was time to draw a line under any doubts Tuchel might have had.
The time for games is over. Croatia are an ageing side but they are still a good side. England have to hit the ground running in Dallas. They have to be at their best and being at their best means having Bellingham in the starting XI.
Belingham has been vying for the No10 shirt with his old friend Morgan Rogers (left), but it is Bellingham who should get the nod against Croatia next week
The Real Madrid star showed glimpses of his quality against New Zealand on Saturday
Bellingham is a Rolls-Royce player. He may have been damned with faint praise recently but that is largely because much of his season at the Bernabeu was wrecked by injury and complicated by the managerial upheavals at Real Madrid. It doesn’t change the fact that he is a generational talent for England.
England have a fine team but not good enough that we can afford to leave a player as talented and as clever as Bellingham on the bench. Leaving him out in Dallas would be self-sabotage, plain and simple.
This is not a qualifier in Latvia. This is not a friendly at Wembley that you use to experiment with different partnerships. Things are about to get real and that means playing England’s best players from the start.
That means playing Bellingham. Tuchel has had time to tell him the way things are and to make it plain exactly what he wants from him on and off the pitch. Now it is time for Tuchel to trust him to perform like the game-changer he can be.
