Thomas Tuchel has dismissed concerns over England’s defensive frailties after their 3-2 defeat by Spain, insisting the team’s biggest threat came from its own mistakes in possession.
The Three Lions conceded to Lamine Yamal, Alex Baena and Mikel Oyarzabal against the world and European champions on Saturday. The result means England have let in nine goals across their last three internationals against Argentina, France and Spain.
Tuchel, however, believes the defensive structure was stronger than in several previous matches and says the problems arose during England’s build-up play, particularly in deep areas.
“It’s not a concern yet,” the England manager said ahead of Tuesday’s Nations League meeting with the Czech Republic.
“I felt that in terms of organised defending, block defending and active defending, we were at a higher level than in many other matches.
“If you want to look at it in isolation on how we did within the structure and in the units of the sides, I was quite happy and I think it was a step ahead.”
Tuchel said England’s individual errors had proved costly against Spain, despite the team continuing to create problems for their opponents.
“We suffered clearly from individual mistakes when we had the ball, especially in the deep build-up, so that is of course something we cannot repeat. Not at this level,” he said.
“Strangely enough, when we had the ball, we were the biggest danger to ourselves around the box because we just had too many individual mistakes. Purely in defending, I have no concerns and I trust that we can do it.”
Tuchel defends England’s identity
The manager’s assessment follows criticism of his tactics during England’s World Cup semi-final defeat by Argentina, when he was accused of protecting a one-goal lead rather than seeking to extend it.
Tuchel subsequently questioned whether controlling matches through possession came naturally to English players, contrasting their footballing identity with that of Spain, Argentina and Brazil.
He now believes England demonstrated a clear style and sufficient courage against Spain, even though mistakes ultimately contributed to their defeat.
“I think there was a lot of discussion about this before [the Spain game],” Tuchel said. “I think we showed our style and we showed our courage. The players showed an identity and they showed it throughout the 90 minutes.”
“We gave them a lot of problems. We caused ourselves some problems with individual mistakes. Mistakes can sometimes happen. They shouldn’t, but they did happen.”
Tuchel added that England had pushed Spain close to defeat and continued to attack after taking the lead.
“We had the world and European champions on the edge of a defeat. In the decisive moments we played our best football. We kept attacking when we were a goal ahead. We were even more dominant and more of a threat,” he said.
England face the Czech Republic away on Tuesday, with kick-off at 7.45pm, before travelling to Croatia on Saturday.
