'It's the energy he brings': how Tuchel makes players better

Those who have played under the England head coach describe an intense obsessive never far from boiling point

- David Hytner

With Thomas Tuchel, the devil is in the detail and it can often seem like an obsessive, controlling force. The new England head coach sees the minutiae like few others. "In training, he will check if you control the ball with the correct foot," says Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who played under him at Borussia Dortmund and, briefly, Chelsea.

Even this does not tell the full story. As other members of Tuchel's Chelsea squad will tell you, he demanded they knew the favoured foot of every teammate and always passed into it; at the right speed, at the right angle, at the right time. Get it wrong and they could expect to hear about it. Perfectionist. Workaholic. A man who considers football like a game of chess. Intensely challenging. They were some of the descriptions that recurred as the Football Association carried out its due diligence into Tuchel and the higher-ups had them reinforced and then some when they met him for talks.

PowerPoint by point, Tuchel walked them through how he saw it all: the preparation work in camps, the creativity he would bring. When things are going well, Tuchel has the ability to hold an audience in the palm of his hand, whether in a dressing room or boardroom. His command of language in his native German or, more pertinently now, English, is beguiling. It was one of the reasons why the FA was sold.

When the governing body started the process to recruit a permanent successor to Sir Gareth Southgate, it divided the candidates into three pots, calling one of them the "super elite." No prizes for guessing where it placed Tuchel. His CV alone explains why there was such a buzz on the England squad's WhatsApp group when the appointment was announced in mid-October, albeit Tuchel would not start work until the new year. Only now have his first games come into view - the World Cup qualifiers at Wembley against Albania on Friday and Latvia on Monday.