Tuchel hits out at ‘lucky’ England after Norway victory
Tuchel hits out at ‘lucky’ England after Norway victory
Matt LawSun, July 12, 2026 at 1:12 AM UTC
0
Tuchel and Bellingham appeared to disagree about the quality of England’s performance against Norway - Elsa/Getty Images
Thomas Tuchel described his England team as as “lucky” and said he was unhappy with how they played, despite booking a place in the World Cup semi-final.
England fought back from falling a goal behind, thanks to two goals from Jude Bellingham, to beat Norway 2-1 in the quarter-finals. But Tuchel criticised the performance of his players.
“We made life very, very difficult for ourselves,” said Tuchel. “The result is fantastic, but I’m not happy with the way we played.”
Asked in what sense he was not happy, Tuchel replied: “In every sense. The commitment is there, [but] we made life very difficult with how we played, sloppy, not enough precision, not enough repetitions, lots of technical mistakes. We were lucky today.
“This [winning] is pure mentality, how can you ask about mentality? There’s no mentality problem, you can bottle it up and sell it.”
The biggest stroke of good fortune was in the build up to Bellingham’s first-half equaliser, when the ball appeared to hit one of the spidercam wires and fall at the feet of Elliot Anderson, who started the move that led to the goal.
Credit: ITV 1/FIFA World Cup 2026
Advertisement
Tuchel reserved some praise for his substitutes and Bellingham, who he described as “world class”.
“Reece James was excellent, Morgan Rogers was excellent, Ebz [Eberechi Eze] grew into the game, Djed Spence grew into the game,” said Tuchel. “But it’s also about quality, we need to play better.”
On Bellingham, he added: “Enough said, he does it every single match. World class. We will get better, we need to get better. Now is celebration, take everything in.”
Bellingham brushed off Tuchel’s criticism of England’s performance by saying: “Whatever. It’s difficult out there, it’s a tough shift. My thought and appreciation is with the players.
“Character, persevere even when things were difficult we found a way to win again. So proud of this team again. It was a victory for everyone, I keep saying it, the whole country wins, all the players who are here, the staff, it is a huge shift.”
On his winning goal, Bellingham added: “It’s an important goal, it’s put us through to a semi-final. I’ve scored loads of those types of goals. The goalkeeper had a worldie but got unlucky there with the way it popped up, and I was lucky enough to be there and put it in.”
Asked whether Tuchel’s tough love demonstrates his high standards, Bellingham added: “Maybe. But maybe he doesn’t know what it’s like to play in those conditions against Erling Haaland, Odegaard, Nusa, Sorloth…they’re not an easy team to play against.
“I think we have tried to create a positive environment and will continue that into the final four. I can’t speak highly enough of the lads. You can’t win every game popping the ball and making 1,000 passes, sometimes you have to win dirty and we did that today.”
Source: “AOL Sports”
