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Thomas Tuchel says England ‘have to play better’ after Norway quarter-final win
Thomas Tuchel says England must play better if they are to win the World Cup after riding their luck in Saturday’s narrow quarter-final victory against Norway.
Jude Bellingham followed his equaliser with an extra-time winner in a tense 2-1 triumph that leaves the team just two matches away from joining Sir Alf Ramsey’s 1966 heroes in immortality.
England were far from their best in the Miami heat and fell behind to an Andreas Schjelderup cross-shot, with Norway having numerous opportunities to score again.
Meticulous Tuchel said he was “not happy with the performance” – something that got under the skin of Bellingham – but he says they need more in Wednesday’s semi-final against Argentina.
Put to him that Bellingham felt the players had put in a good shift in challenging conditions, the England boss said: “Absolutely, no one disputes that. I am impressed with the shift that they put in.
“The effort, team spirit, the belief and to overcome adversity and to dig in and find ways to win is on the absolutely highest level. They cannot get enough praise for that.
“But I’m also a football coach and I think we can play better. In general, I think it was not a high-level game. I think we had better games in general.”
He continued: “We had a lot of momentum swings for both teams, so, yeah, full credit to the team. We found a way. We’re in the last four.
“This is, of course, the most important but the analysing head of me and the football coach in me still thinks that we can and have to play better football.”
Tuchel and Bellingham made their initial comments with emotions still high after a difficult match was decided by the Real Madrid maestro, who picked up his fourth man of the match award of the summer.
“World class,” the England boss said. “World class performance from a world-class player in big, big moments, in crucial moments, so absolute top class.”
Bellingham dragged England through their latest knockout test, with Tuchel conceding they rode their luck having overcome the Democratic Republic of Congo and co-hosts Mexico.
Norway not only had opportunities to win the quarter-final but were aggrieved that Bellingham’s opener was allowed to stand after the ball appeared to hit overhead camera wires.
FIFA said the “connected ball” showed no evidence of that and Tuchel said: “Yeah, I heard that.
“But there’s a chip in the ball that can tell you if a hair touches it, as we know since the Croatia v Portugal game, so they should be able to tell you if it happened.
“I was not aware of it, I didn’t see it, and FIFA said (their statement) and I think we just got lucky in decisive moments.
“I’m not saying that we are lucky to win, but we are lucky in decisive moments that could have gone the other way.
“We were lucky to not be 2-0 down with a big mistake in the deep build-up.
“We were lucky in the end (with the disallowed Norway goal). Even if it’s the right decision, you always need a bit of luck that a referee overturns a goal and then decides that, in the build-up of the goal, the ball was not in play, there was a foul.
“So, in these moments, we were lucky. I stand with that. Not that overall.
“There’s also nothing wrong. No one ever denied that you need luck to go in tournament football.
“You need moments where you’re lucky otherwise it’s just not possible. I see no harm in admitting it and it’s just the way I felt today.”
