Over what range will you fire? Probably not more than 400ft. Will the gentleman be moving? Stationary. What about the chances of a second shot? Well, I might get the chance. But I doubt it.
Ten months before the epic landscapes of World Cup USA 2026, the Day of the Jackal seems a pretty good cinematic model for the mission Thomas Tuchel is facing. As England trundle through the familiar autumn rhythms of a tournament preamble, it is probably time for some real talk about the sui generis one-shot task the Football Association has devised for its head coach.
It is of course still necessary to take a view on Andorra at home and the more urgent test of Serbia away on Tuesday night, because they are happening now, because this is content and the football brain demands its chemical hit. But Andorra was dull. Senegal at home and Andorra away were poor. We know how this works, the background throb of social media, radio chat, England angst channelled reflexively into dark talk about progress, signs, culture, finding your best team.
At which point it is also necessary to take a step back from these well-grooved anxieties, because the task at hand is also very different this time. First because the goal that has been set for Tuchel – win the World Cup or die – is both absurd and bracingly aspirational. England have a good team. Reaching a final is possible, because finals have been reached before. Why not try something different now, crank the lever to 11, apply a little wild short-term pressure?
But it is also important to accept that this changes what needs to happen now. We can already say with some clarity the success or failure of the Tuchel project is likely be defined by a single passage of football, half an hour in New Jersey or San Francisco next summer. The mission is agreeably stark: can you beat Spain, France or similar in a knockout game? Can you find that moment, the mid-match tactical rejig, clarity under pressure?
A game of walking-football in early autumn has always been an entirely separate thing to the sharp end of a tournament, at best a chance to finesse and think about the future. It is now entirely irrelevant. For the first time being England manager is overtly not about making something. Tuchel is not president of the republic, out there building a culture. He is instead the Jackal. The mission is a one-off hit, a headshot from the balcony, using only the tools within his reach.
Understanding the nature of that mission is key at this stage, for Tuchel himself, but also for those on the sidelines. We are hardwired to look always for wider progress. Recent history tells us World Cups are won by building things. The French academy system. The German academy system. Argentinian genius-ball. We remember the Gareth days, which were all culture, the sense that a kindly anteater in a waistcoat is going to repoint your entire house even if it kills him in the process. As far back as the Graham Taylor era there was a sense of trying to express some half-understood form of Englishness, a benevolent nativism, like trying to cure knife crime with trolleybuses and Morris dancing.
Tuchel is being asked to do the exact opposite. Building a culture, finding an entirely un-English form of self-expression against the nihilism-ball of Andorra. This is a distraction. The job is to find tactical hacks for when England are playing a totally different kind of game, when the ball has suddenly disappeared, the midfield been suffocated, when victory is about shifting the energy against a better team.
It is vital to know what the Tuchel era is not. Do not build a team in your own image. What’s the point? There’s a team already there. England managers always need a thing, a gimmick. Don’t have one of these. There isn’t time. Don’t experiment too much or reach too high. It was perhaps a good thing Tuchel was missing six key players against Andorra, players who will be vital to the actual test, the high‑end stuff next July. The fix, if there is to be a fix, will be the simplest, shortest route, uncluttered by more complex notions of team building.
No doubt Tuchel himself appreciates this. Although before Andorra there were still some slightly worrying noises. What, for example, is this?
“We tried to give solutions in the first two camps through the structure. We played different structures in the buildup and put players in new positions. Maybe I underestimated the effect that it has. Maybe we translated it a little too much from club football and we need to take a step back to speed up our game with a bit more freedom and less changes within the structure. Maybe the solution comes from running more, from more energy than the structure.”
No, Thomas. Just no. This is all valid, complex, finely tuned chat. But it’s also culture stuff. It’s anti‑clarity at this stage. This is macro-management, not the one‑shot killer with a mercury bullet in his Zimmer frame. You don’t ask the Jackal to explore the mechanics for democratic change. And if you did the Jackal would become distracted, would lose his sniper sight case on the bus. You ask him for one clean shot and leave the future to other people.
Tuchel said other culture-based things. He questioned whether England’s players actually loved or just liked representing the national team. Do you really want to open that box, to unravel those unravellable feelings? Remember Gary Cooper. The problem with Gary Cooper? They got him in touch with his feelings. In the end they couldn’t shut him up. Eleven months. Four proper games. We don’t have time for resets, for anything more than target practice.
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With this in mind it was good to hear Tuchel again after Andorra, when he was broadly encouraged, but seemed uninterested in drilling down into the details. And Tuesday night does at least present something more urgent, at this stage the most useful pre‑World Cup assignment of the entire Tuchel project.
The only other games in the book right now are Wales at home, Latvia away, Serbia at home and Albania away. There will be friendlies in the new year, but no high-grade tactical test of the type Tuchel will face when the moment arrives.
Arguably the best possible preparation would be to end up in a playoff, to be tested in March in a way that is at least analogous to next summer and the need for winning on the fly, feeling the tactical moment in your body and blood, to borrow from Fabian Hürzeler after Brighton’s comeback against Manchester City last week.
With any luck the Red Star Stadium (now known as the Rajko Mitic Stadium) will be the right kind of hostile. Serbia are good enough to have periods of domination. In an ideal world England would concede first, or struggle with their shape, demand a mid-match rejig.
Success at the World Cup is likely to come down, as ever, to the midfield balance, a search for players brave enough to keep the ball in knockout games against elite opponents. Elliot Anderson seems likely to get a chance in Belgrade. He is clearly a calm, technically gifted option. Ideally he too will struggle, battle with the occasion, and give the manager some evidence that he can also overcome this.
For now this is the only kind of practice that matters, not another turgid night watching English footballers struggle with the idea of free expression against a low block. Come the day of the Tuchel, the target will be stationary, the mission parameters defined, a one‑off shot from the balcony. Until then everything else is just noise.
