He won’t be the last manager to win the Champions League with an English team leading the Three Lions on the way to the 2026 World Cup but… the penultimate. Pep Guardiola will remain a dream for England like Carlo Ancelotti for Brazil: the FA has chosen to rely on Thomas Tuchel.
After the farewell of Gareth Southgatewho abdicated following his second consecutive disappointment at the European Championships, the Federation had entrusted the bench to Lee Carsley as a ferryman while waiting to identify the right coach to cover such a delicate role. The right man is the 51-year-old German, ready to get back into the game after the uninspiring experience on the bench of Bayern Munich, which remained incredibly without trophies last season. The former Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain coach, who waited in vain for nods from Manchester United, will thus become the third foreign coach in the history of the English national team after Sven-Göran Eriksson and Fabio Capello.
The agreement was reached in the last few hours, the official announcement should arrive shortly. The presentation at Wembley is scheduled for 2.30pm; Tuchel will sign until 2026, with the option to extend the deal if he performs well, and will earn around £5 million a year. A German leading England, strange but true.