Tuchel already doomed to ‘failure’ with GERMAN set to ‘walk’ after 2026 World Cup heartbreak

Thomas Tuchel said some things at Wembley yesterday, and in an early taste of what he can expect as a GERMAN England manager, they’ve already been deliberately misinterpreted.

Walk the walk
After xenophobia’s big day out yesterday, today is all about the GERMAN Thomas Tuchel’s England unveiling and whether or not he met the demanding Spoke Well, I Thought standards of the press pack overlords.

And yes, we will be calling him GERMAN Thomas Tuchel at all times from now on. Sorry about that.

First stop is the Telegraph, where Matt Law has been completely tucked up by the headline writer.

Thomas Tuchel: England job is win or bust – if we do not win World Cup, we will walk

Alright, they’ve stopped short of actual quote marks, but it’s still a headline that very clearly implies it carries a direct quote from the GERMAN.

But not only is it not a direct quote of anything Tuchel said at Wembley yesterday, it’s a thoroughly disingenuous interpretation of what he did say, and which Law covers far more even-handedly in the piece itself.

The phrase ‘win or bust’ is Law’s own interpretation of an 18-month contract that covers only the qualification and finals of the 2026 World Cup, while Tuchel himself made multiple mentions of his clear goal being to put a ‘second star’ on the England shirt.

So yes, there’s little doubt what the primary goal is here from Tuchel’s own words and that very specific contract length. But what Tuchel absolutely did not say – and importantly Law does not claim he did – is that anything less than winning the World Cup automatically constitutes failure and the end.

We’ll use Law’s own copy here, because it’s ideal.

With Tuchel not starting work until January 1, his initial 18-month contract runs to the end of the World Cup in 2026, when he accepts he will either be judged a success or a failure.

Asked if anything but winning the World Cup will be seen as failure, Tuchel said: ‘I don’t know. I know what you’re saying. We speak it out now very clearly why we are here and what we want to achieve. We are not shy of it. We are absolutely open about it.

‘It does not help the more often we speak about it, but it should be out there and then we can set the standards and set the values and principles because then we have to live up to them for 18 months.

‘Let’s judge it when we have done it. If we decide it was a failure, then we will not continue. If we decide it was not a failure, then we will continue. Let’s see.’

Tuchel is deliberately ambiguous here. He has set winning the World Cup as a primary target, but very clearly stopped some way short of that being the one clear dividing line between success and failure.

You cannot go around turning ‘I don’t know’ into ‘if we do not win World Cup, we will walk’. Even with a bit of headline writer’s licence there’s just no way you can argue that’s a fair representation of what he said.

He was far more equivocal and never used the phrase ‘we will walk’ at all even when acknowledging that a very deliberately non-specific ‘failure’ would represent an end point.

There’s no issue with an opinion piece arguing that anything other than a World Cup win represents such failure – not that Law even really does that in a pretty straight piece of news reporting – but you absolutely cannot just decide that’s what Tuchel himself said when he pointedly did not.

Floating third
The bad news for GERMAN Thomas Tuchel is that he is already doomed to that failure. He is not going to win the World Cup, England will not get that second star.

He will lead England only to third place in North America in 2026.

How do we know this? Because of a supercomputer, obviously. You know how much we bloody love those.

This one that The Sun have found is particularly great/batsh*t mental depending on your view. Because this supercomputer hasn’t just come up with some vague probabilities or looked at betting odds or anything so mundane. No, this bad boy has plotted out the entire path of a tournament that doesn’t happen for another 20 months, and for which the qualifiers – never mind the draw – are not yet known.

There are so many things we love about supercomputer predictions, but right up there is the way it’s apparently just been decided that their findings must always be relayed with the same gravity and importance as actual events that are real.

It’s entirely mad that something called ‘SimWorldCup’ – which linguistics fans will be interested to note is run not by the traditional ‘boffins’ but instead by ‘whizzes’, which we think is at least one step down from boffin – has predicted specific results for every match of a tournament that doesn’t even have an entry list of teams yet.

It is as close to meaningless as it’s possible for a thing to be, coming up with such exact predictions for fixtures that are themselves already wildly unlikely predictions.

And yet madder still to then treat this as some sage-like wisdom rather than some fluff from some whizzes.

The Three Lions topped their group with three wins from three over South Korea, Paraguay and South Africa.

It’s not real! They haven’t done any of that. Stop talking like it’s happened.

While their knockout efforts included wins over Panama, host nation the USA and Belgium.

No! They didn’t! Their knockout efforts haven’t included anything! The tournament hasn’t happened and won’t happen for another year and a half! We feel like we’re taking crazy pills here.

And Tuchel’s men are in line for some attractive football if the simulation is to be correct, as England netted 17 times and conceded just three across the supercomputer’s predictions.

At least here there is acknowledgement that it isn’t real, because we were beginning to doubt ourselves.

Anyway, surely the thing that gives the game away completely here is the idea that England might win a third-place play-off. They never bother with that sort of thing.

Still, though, congratulations, we guess, to Argentina for successfully defending their title with a 1-0 win over European champions Spain in the final.

Actually, England will win the World Cup. We have 16 Conclusions and everything.

Chat trick
But while The Sun’s supercomputer shtick feels harmless enough, it’s a different story – quite literally – over at the Daily Star.

Now absolutely nobody in the football media uses the word ‘supercomputer’ correctly because the whole concept is so endearingly quaint. Nobody wields it quite so disingenuously as the Star, however, where increasingly it is used to justify the sheer brass-balls laziness of getting ChatGPT to do their job for them. A decision that happily carries no long-term fears for the entire future of journalism itself and is therefore not wildly self-defeatingly dangerous as well as just really lazy and sh*t.

In a truly bizarre piece, the Star have asked ChatGPT what it makes of England’s chances at the 2026 World Cup under Tuchel and then carried its answers as if they are real actual quotes that have some value. There really is something quite dystopian about it.

Maybe Mediawatch is feeling the icy finger of death at its own back, but we do find something very chilling about this being packaged up as just more normal content.

Daily Star Sport asked AI, in the form of ChatGPT, how England could fare at the upcoming World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico. “England could potentially reach the semi-finals or even the final under Tuchel,” it predicted.

“His tactical acumen and ability to motivate players might help England overcome the psychological barrier they’ve faced in recent tournaments. Whether they could go all the way would likely depend on fine margins, such as set pieces, penalties, or key player fitness.”

However, it doesn’t come without its warnings. ChatGPT has admitted that international football isn’t the same as club football.

It said: “Unlike at club level, national team managers have limited time to implement their ideas. It could take some time for the players to fully grasp Tuchel’s complex tactical systems, potentially affecting performances early in the tournament.”

Just… weird, isn’t it? Surely? To treat such utterly mundane and – by definition – entirely derivative statements in the same way you would the quotes of an actual manager? Is it just us? We fear it’s just us.

Tuch the p*ss
The Sun have never needed a second invitation to concoct a terrible pun on someone’s name, but the early evidence suggests the liberty-taking with ‘Tuchel’ is going to reach unprecedented heights.

We really are going to have to insist that they decide on one pronunciation for ‘Tuch’ and stick to it, because on their football homepage just from the last 24 hours we’ve got:

CAN’T TUCH THIS

THE BAD TUCH

CAN’T TUCH THIS (again)

TUCH A NEW TURN

TUCH HIS CHANCE

TUCH OF CLASS

TUCHY SUBJECT

We know it’s a forlorn request. Really, the only ones of these that even halfway work with the actual way his actual name is pronounced are ‘TUCH A NEW TURN’ and ‘TUCH HIS CHANCE’ but there’s clearly greater scope with pretending it’s more like ‘touch’ and worrying about how things are actually said has never stopped them before and clearly isn’t about to now.

Frank speaking
But really, never mind all that England nonsense because the Barclays is back, back, back this weekend with all its customary nonsense.

That means renewed focus on Crisis Club Manchester United and Erik Ten Hag, perhaps the single most beleaguered boss since Premier League records began.

They’ve got Brentford this week, and with the Bees manager Thomas Frank one of approximately 800 managers linked with Ten Hag’s job this has inevitably been dubbed an ‘audition’ even though we’ve checked and it is still in fact definitely just a football match.

On which note, the Mirror bring us this sh*thouse headline

Brentford boss Thomas Frank sends message to Erik ten Hag ahead of Man Utd audition

Okay, we know and you know what’s happened here, but let’s get the boxes ticked anyway.

Here’s that Frank message in full, with the customary invitation to count the mentions of Ten Hag or Man Utd in this message he has apparently sent the United manager. We all already know the answer, don’t we?

Speaking to talkSPORT, Frank was quizzed on the assertion from Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola in September that the Brentford boss moving into a top managerial job was “just a question of time”. “I’ve said many times I’m very happy at Brentford,” Frank began.

“Who knows what will happen in the future. Maybe I stay here for many years. I’m open, maybe something happens. But first and foremost, very happy, just working very hard every day to make the club better.”

When pushed further on his reference to the future, he said: “That’s because it’s very difficult to predict the future. Who knows what will happen. How many coaches have been at the same club more than six years? Very few.”

Message received.

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