Tuchel exclusive
Thomas Tuchel dismissed any reports of a rift between him and Jude Bellingham.
The England manager instead criticised the question put to his star man moments after the win over Norway.
It was put to Bellingham that Tuchel was not very happy with the performance.
The 23-year-old, who scored twice, said ‘whatever’ in response.
Speaking to eSPORTY about the incident, Tuchel said: “I wonder who blows these things up. So there is nothing to blow up and if it’s blown up it’s blown up in the media of course.
“Like what do you expect of a player that just played 120 minutes and gave literally everything? If you shorten the comment of his coach, if you don’t tell him that he was world-class, if you don’t tell him that he has world-class actions, if you just cut all this and tell him, oh your coach said you were sloppy, what do you expect?”
“Of course you get the comment that you get and then you try to blow it up and try to create misunderstandings and cracks where no cracks are.
“We come from the same place, we come from being competitive and I’m a competitive coach. I push this team to the limit and that was my assessment and, like I said, I think the question was unfair in this moment of time towards Jude because he cut all the compliments out of my assessment and just asked about the critical points so I can understand what you expect of a player that just gave everything and stands there in front of a microphone in a flash interview.
“That’s just what it, but we’re close as ever and closer than ever before. You can see that on the field, energy and mentality on campus is excellent through the last days and we’re ready to go for it.”
There is no problem between Tuchel and Bellingham
