In the end, Steve, Brian, Gaz or similar, he’s just not done the job he was hired to do. The one he was hired to do? There are three things here.
And if you put those things together, there is no clear equation of … no linear semiotic cluster, he’s not, he’s just not, what I’m saying is … How many times have you heard variations on this statement in the few short, tender weeks since England’s World Cup campaign? Perhaps you strayed too close to a sport-themed radio show, or accidentally ingested a celebrity football pundit podcast. Either way the verdict is pretty much universal, and delivered always with an air of finality, a sad shake of the head.
The non-winning of a World Cup. The failure to make substitutions to nullify big-game full-bore Lionel Messi. The non-doing of a job you were, apparently, hired for.
Even if that job, in isolation, was also a pretty stupid idea in the first place. Tuchel made a decent effort last week at steering attention to the more favourable aspects of England’s World Cup, but it’s clear he’s fighting a losing battle here. Nobody cares about his all-time highest managerial win ratio, or a best-ever England World Cup performance overseas.
Instead the key note is failure. And not just everyday failure, but failure so profound it amounts to outright wage-theft. As England arrive at a vital 20-month period in the national team’s history, Tuchel’s capacities in the job will be defined, until proved otherwise, by those final 20 minutes against Argentina, during which he failed to control the endless variables of a World Cup semi-final and was reduced to looking on helplessly, whirling his arms around like a scurvy-ridden Prussian general on his way to an executive golf weekend, out there not doing the thing he was hired for.
Even if – and it is quite an important point – that thing made little actual sense. All political careers end in failure. All England managerial careers start in failure, continue in failure and implode in failure.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
