Eight Wins, Zero Conceded, and the England Nobody Trusts

England have not conceded a goal in a competitive match under Thomas Tuchel: 8 World Cup qualifiers, 8 wins, 8 clean sheets. They scored 22 and conceded none, the first European nation ever to come through a qualifying campaign that way, and they travel to North America ranked fourth in the world.

The perfect record came against ordinary opposition: the best side England beat in qualifying was ranked 39th. When England have faced stronger opposition, Tuchel's men have struggled and have not won once.

Across the eight qualifiers England faced six shots on target in total, the fewest of any of the 54 nations in European qualifying, and the lowest expected goals against. Jordan Pickford went 720 minutes without picking the ball out of his net, and England won 10 competitive games in a row without conceding, a streak only Spain between 2014 and 2016 had matched in Europe. The 11-game competitive winning run Tuchel has assembled is the longest in England's history.

The manager does not hide what the team is for. After sealing qualification with a 5-0 win in Riga in October, he described a side with a “club feel”, one that plays “very aggressive” with “a high press”, the vocabulary of a club coach rather than an international one. He named a 26 with nine defenders in it and a 4-2-3-1 built to be hard to play through. Across the whole campaign, nobody played through it.

The three best sides England have faced under Tuchel are Senegal, Japan and Uruguay, and they did not win any of them. Senegal won 3-1 at the City Ground in June, becoming the first African men's side ever to do it. Japan won 1-0 at Wembley the following March, the first Asian team to manage it there, on a night England did not register a shot on target in the first half. Uruguay left with a draw after equalising in the 94th minute.

Even the routine nights were not always convincing. England were booed in the win over Andorra, ranked 173rd, and ground out the return 2-0 against opponents Tuchel compared to chewing gum.

In the final qualifier in Tirana they produced the lowest first-half expected goals of his entire reign, 0.29, before two late Kane goals settled it. They dominated the ball in every game and still managed only the fifth-best expected goals in qualifying, a team that controls matches more easily than it breaks them down. Their last tune-ups before the tournament came against New Zealand and Costa Rica, not the kind of opposition that answers the question.

Tuchel left Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, Morgan Gibbs-White, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Harry Maguire at home, the boldest set of England omissions since Glenn Hoddle dropped Paul Gascoigne in 1998. For the first time since 1986, no Liverpool player is in an England tournament squad. At number 10 he refused to carry five players for one position and kept only Jude Bellingham, Morgan Rogers and Eberechi Eze. At right-back he left out Alexander-Arnold, the best passer of the group, and took right-backs who defend first instead.

His explanation has not changed since his first week in the job. “We are trying to select and build the best possible team, which is not necessarily to select and collect the 26 most talented players,” he said. “Teams win championships.” Maguire, who had started 14 of Manchester United's last 16 league games, called himself “shocked and gutted”. Gibbs-White, who scored 15 Premier League goals this season, more than any England outfielder bar Ollie Watkins, said he had ended up on “the wrong side of someone's opinion”.

What he kept is as revealing as what he cut. Jordan Henderson, 35, travels to a fourth World Cup, and 9 of the 26 have never played at a major tournament. This is a manager who won the Champions League with Chelsea and a Bundesliga title with Bayern, backing a conviction rather than experimenting, choosing the team he trusts to defend a lead and hold a dressing room for seven weeks over the one that looks best on paper. “I love the tough decisions,” he said.

Harry Kane scored 36 Bundesliga goals and 61 in all competitions for Bayern this season, and he remains the axis of everything England do going forward. Tuchel has put it as bluntly as anyone could want: “In the absence of Harry Kane, we don't have the same threat. No team in the world has the same threat.” That is a strength and a dependency at once.

Behind Kane the creation is thinner than the talent pool suggests, because the talent pool is the part Tuchel trimmed. Bellingham, Rogers and Eze are the three left to fill the single number 10 role, and the manager's chief insurance against a Kane injury is Ivan Toney, recalled from Al-Ahli on the back of 32 goals in Saudi Arabia having barely featured for England in a year. It is a forward line built around one irreplaceable striker and a deputy a long way from this level, with the structure behind them as the safety net.

England open against Croatia on the 17th of June, then meet Ghana and Panama. On ranking it is a forgiving draw, with Croatia 11th, Panama 33rd and Ghana 74th, and England have never met Ghana in a competitive match and put six past Panama the last time the two played, in 2018.

Croatia are the exception, and not only on paper. Croatia knocked England out at this stage eight years ago, coming from behind to win the 2018 semi-final in extra time, the last time the two met at a World Cup.

Zlatko Dalic still has Luka Modric, 40 now. Win the group and England most likely stay on the kinder side of a bracket arranged to keep the top four nations apart until the semi-finals. The path is there. Whether this team is built to take it is the only question that matters.

There are two ways to read this England, and both are true. Tuchel has decided that a side which does not concede, presses like a club team and runs everything through Harry Kane is worth more than one carrying Foden, Palmer and Gibbs-White and hoping it clicks.

Eight qualifiers proved the first version works against weak teams. The friendlies are the only test of what happens against good ones, and England have yet to win one.

England have not won a major tournament since 1966, and the two finals they have reached since both came at the European Championship and both ended in defeat, the most recent against Spain two years ago. Tuchel was hired for this and little else, his appointment built around winning a single World Cup, and he has spent the time building a team in his own image rather than the country's. If it works, he is the manager who finally stripped England down to something that holds. If the only sides capable of exposing him in qualifying were the ones he never had to play, he finds that out against Croatia, and the country finds out with him.

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