Thomas Tuchel made Ivan Toney the wildcard selection of his World Cup squad after holding clear-the-air talks with him over his attitude. The England head coach also considered how Harry Kane likes to play alongside Toney before making the Al-Ahli striker the most eye-catching inclusion of his 26-man party for the tournament.
Tuchel’s squad announcement at Wembley was dominated as ever by the players he overlooked – chiefly Cole Palmer, Phil Foden and Harry Maguire. Tuchel said Palmer had “just failed” to produce consistently this season, while he admitted he no longer knew Foden’s best position.
Toney has come in from the cold, having been involved in only one camp under Tuchel – in June of last year for the matches against Andorra and Senegal. Toney’s involvement was limited to two minutes of the latter game and he did nothing to impress Tuchel with his application. Yet Tuchel came back around to him when he considered how he might affect a World Cup game late on, especially if England were behind and chasing a goal. He mentioned Toney’s power on set pieces and his excellent penalty taking.
“I was not happy with the June camp … he [Toney] knows that,” Tuchel said. “And we had to clear the air after that. That was the first step to even start thinking about calling him up again because I was not happy. Then we started talking more deeply about the team [in recent weeks], different scenarios and his name came up constantly. Harry [Kane] loves to play with him because he thinks that he takes the attention off him.”
Tuchel was asked whether he had any concerns about Toney’s personality in light of the June camp. “No,” he said. “It was not a matter of his character. The level of training and the level of commitment was not where we wanted. He can start for us but I don’t see him as a starter. His role is to finish matches for us. He is, in this case, part of a special operations team.”
Tuchel’s principal theme was unselfishness, a devotion to the framework of the squad, the collective brotherhood. He remembered a scene from after the 5-0 win over Serbia last September where five or six players who had not featured went off to do running drills on an adjoining pitch. “There was almost no light at all [after the Serbia game] and the quality of the pitches was not there,” Tuchel said. “The players were not aware that Anthony Barry [Tuchel’s assistant] was watching and it was just so beautiful. They just said: ‘Come on, let’s do some runs’ and that felt really, really good.”
