The new England manager is a Champions League winner, has coached or competed against many of the players he will work with over the next 18 months and, of no consequence at all, was born in Krumbach, Germany.
Have we really not grown up enough to be able to look past Thomas Tuchel’s passport and focus on the overwhelming positives of his impending appointment?
In an ideal world the figurehead of the England team would be English but the Football Association’s priority must be to hire the best person for the job and in Tuchel they have nailed the brief.
Gareth Southgate may have restored pride in the national team, but defeats in consecutive European Championship finals brutally exposed shortcomings that hailing from Hertfordshire failed to compensate for.
The two most qualified England candidates to succeed Southgate, meanwhile, appear to be cut from similar cloth. Indeed, while Tuchel thrived in the heat of the Chelsea cauldron, Potter simply melted away while although Howe can point to an impressive record at Newcastle, the demands of operating in the St James’ Park goldfish bowl are a world away from the pressures of managing England.
The idea of promoting from within, meanwhile, may have had a convenient, PR-able element to it and although it is a model that has worked for Spain, Lee Carsley wreaked of caretaker so deeply he might as well have reported for duty for last week’s Nations League fixtures with a mop and bucket.
We shouldn’t rewrite history either and pretend Southgate had long been marked out for managerial stardom by the FA. He was parachuted into the job after his predecessor was sacked in disgrace having been caught negotiating with a Fake Sheikh.
Southgate got lucky with the FA and vice versa. After the missed opportunities of the 51-year-old’s reign the governing body appear to have belatedly settled on the realisation that winning is all that really matters. Having sounded out Pep Guardiola they shot for the moon and missed but Tuchel is no consolation prize.
A serial trophy collector, tactical innovator and master communicator, it’s hard to comprehend how fortunate England have been to be in a position to hire someone of Tuchel’s calibre virtually unopposed.
England have been down this road before, of course, and been burned. Fabio Capello was an unmitigated disaster while the Sven Goran Eriksson era has been the subject of some rose tinted revisionism following his sad death.
Neither of those seasoned campaigners, however, were as qualified for the role as Tuchel given the success he has already enjoyed in the Premier League.
Thomas Tuchel: What the pundits say
‘I think Thomas Tuchel his credentials as a manager, put everything to one side, he’s won the Champions League, the biggest club competition on the planet, he came in there [at Chelsea], took over a squad that was a bit fragmented, lacking confidence, got them together and created an environment, a culture that put them on the track to win the Champions League, beating Pep Guardiola’s Man City in the final.
‘So when you’ve got that on your CV, that says, ‘he knows how to navigate tournament football’, yes, it’s different at international level, I know that, but he’s done it at club football and that’s where you’re getting judged.’
‘It’s not like he’s been a massive success,’ Redknapp said of Tuchel on Sky Sports. ‘He’s come and gone at a couple of clubs.
‘I’m very patriotic, I think we should have an English manager but obviously the field was very small to choose from.
‘Englishmen don’t get many chances to manage in the Premier League now. It’s all foreign owners and it’s always got to be a foreign manager. We’ve only got two or three managers in the Premier League who are English.’
‘Would I have preferred it to be an English manager? Of course. But the options are very, very limited. And you have to say he’s as good as there is out there who wanted the job.
‘He’s won the Champions League, league titles, lots of different clubs, lots of different players, so therefore in that box, successful manager, worked at the top, big tick. Let’s be honest, there will be a lot of people out there, the fact he’s German will be an issue.
In many ways Tuchel will walk into a job not dissimilar to the one he took on at Chelsea where he replaced a club legend in Frank Lampard who, like Southgate, was prematurely over-promoted as result of a quirk of fate, in that instance a transfer ban that no other elite manager was prepared to work under.
He will be fully aware of just how thick a skin he will require to cope with the forensic examination his private life will be subject to, as well as the requirement to field questions that are as likely to focus on Harry Kane’s ability to counter press as the colour of the England flag on the latest kit, or Qatar’s human rights record.
The least of anyone’s concerns, however, should be his nationality.
England’s Bazball cricket revolution, after all, has been masterminded by a Kiwi, while much of the success Team GB enjoyed at the recent Olympics had foreign ingenuity and innovation at its heart. More pertinently, perhaps, the Lionesses went one better than their male counterparts three years ago with, shock horror, a Dutchwoman at the helm.
There will be bumps in the road, of course. The acrimonious nature of his downfall at Stamford Bridge will serve as a warning to his new paymasters but Tuchel is far from alone in having had difficulties warming to Todd Boehly and his maverick ways.
Most pertinently, it should be remembered that within six months, Tuchel turned Chelsea from a side who were outclassed by Leicester City into European champions and Club World Cup winners shortly afterwards.
Should he repeat that success with England, whether he’s able to recite God Save the King will rightly be the last of anyone’s concerns.