ATLANTA STADIUM — By the time Thomas Tuchel began speaking, there wasn’t an empty seat in the room. There wasn’t a square foot of floor space, either. It wouldn’t even be accurate to call Tuchel’s press conference a standing-room-only affair, as a line of reporters and camera crews snaked all the way out the door.
Yet there was Tuchel, England’s German coach, smiling and looking relaxed as anyone could less than 24 hours before the biggest moment of a career that already included a UEFA Champions League crown.
What’s his secret? Ice cream, it turns out.
On Wednesday, Tuchel will lead the best Three Lions squad in decades into the semifinals of the 2026 FIFA World Cup against Lionel Messi and defending champions Argentina.
The stakes are enormous for both nations but especially the English, who haven’t reached the title game since winning their one and only World Cup 60 years ago this month.
(Photo by Eddie Keogh – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
Figuratively speaking. Tuchel and his players have stared death in the face during this knockout stage. They went down a goal to DR Congo in the round of 32 and to Norway in last weekend’s quarterfinal. They went down a man in the thin air of Mexico City against the tournament co-host El Tri. They survived and advanced each time. Between those emotionally draining elimination games, Tuchel has done everything possible to keep his players loose, giving them time to unwind and recover at the team’s base camp in Kansas.
How does he do the same for himself, the former Chelsea, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Borussia Dortmund boss was asked shortly after England’s delegation landed in Georgia’s stately capital.
“Sometimes you just go on a bike and then you just need a big parking lot and an ice cream in your hands for 15 minutes,” a smiling Tuchel said.
“Then you feel like [you’re ] 15 years outdated — 15 not 50,” added the 52-year-old, as a few of these in attendance chuckled. “You’re feeling like 12 or 13 or 15 years outdated and also you get pleasure from your night — a heat summer season night for quarter-hour with an ice cream.”
(Picture by Martin Rickett/PA Photographs by way of Getty Photographs)
The admission was an endearing one from the famously intense Tuchel, who caught some warmth following his workforce’s gutsy fight-back in opposition to Norway for criticizing afterward England’s efficiency from a pure soccer perspective, although he gushed about his gamers’ coronary heart and never-say-die will to win.
Tuchel’s phrases appeared to catch Participant of the Match Jude Bellingham off-guard within the second, leading to speculation that the coach had irritated certainly one of his prime gamers and, doubtlessly, others, too.
Middle again Marc Guéhi did his greatest to appropriate the document on Tuesday.
“I believe the supervisor’s finished an awesome job,” stated Guéhi “He is created a squad the place there is a huge togetherness and an actual perception in what we’re doing in the mean time, and everybody’s behind him. We’re glad to have him.”
The sensation is mutual. “They merely do not give in,” Tuchel stated of his squad. “That is the important thing attribute of our workforce, which makes me very proud.”
(Picture by Eddie Keogh – The FA/The FA by way of Getty Photographs)
Will or not it’s sufficient to see off Messi & Co.? Whether it is and England punches its ticket to face Spain — which beat France on Tuesday within the different semi in Dallas — Tuchel will likely be only one extra victory away from historical past. Not solely would he change into the one coach alive to guide England again to the largest match in sports activities, he’d even have the possibility to change into the primary international supervisor to win a World Cup. No nation, males’s or ladies’s, has ever hoisted the trophy below a coach who wasn’t a citizen of that nation — not that Tuchel is considering that.
“By no means,” he stated. “It simply would not work like this for me. I do not set these targets. I simply love what I do, and I am grateful for the chance.”
“I simply attempt to be one of the best coach doable each single day,” he added. “I’ve to affect what I can, and that is the place my power goes.”
That and on the occasional frozen dessert.
