Burn inspired by Tuchel's England vision to secure glory

Thomas Tuchel ushered in a fresh dawn with England by spelling out to the players that it was purely about winning the 2026 World Cup.

- David Hytner

The head coach delivered an inspirational address at St George's Park on Monday, according to Dan Burn, who is a part of the squad for the first time, stressing the time together would be short and every day counted. "He said that the goal is to put another star on the jersey," Burn said.

"Speaking to the lads after, everyone was impressed with how he came across - with his vision of what he wanted to do. You could see looking around that people were tuned in and really want to buy into that."

Tuchel, who is preparing for the qualifying ties at Wembley against Albania on Friday and Latvia on Monday, made the point that there would be only 24 days of training before the World Cup. As such, it was even more important to create a spirit of "brotherhood" - one in which everybody pushed one another and, as Burn put it, no one was "afraid to speak up if something is not right or should change".

The Newcastle defender said: "For that initial meeting, it was more probably about a mentality and how he wanted us to act around each other. He said he'd spoken to players from previous tournaments and from other countries about what the difference was between when they went out in early rounds and what happened when they won it. And a lot of it was about interactions.