Tuchel's backing gives Rash boost

OREL GRINFELD is not one of world football’s high-profile referees but he is clearly a pretty decent one.

- By Andy Dunn

After all, he was one of the few inside Wembley last night who immediately noticed Marcus Rashford had, er, anticipated penalty-box contact from Roberts Savalnieks rather than actually felt it.

If you are not inclined to give Rashford the benefit of the doubt, the Israeli referee was one of the few people inside the stadium who spotted a dive.

But dive or not, it came at the end of an attempt to get beyond the Latvian defence. It came from a direct run.

And it came from Thomas Tuchel’s words of criticism in the wake of the win against Albania three days earlier.

England’s new head coach is clearly not worried about offending players’ sensibilities and was fairly dismissive of Rashford’s and Phil Foden’s contributions to the 2-0 victory.