Big salary, bizarre start date - Thomas Tuchel is an expensive gamble FA didn't need to take

Depending on the draw, which takes place in December, England might only need six matches . The two teams who make it to the final in New York will have played eight matches by the time the tournament ends.

So, if he is as good as his self-confidence suggests he is, Thomas Tuchel might have 14 competitive matches as England’s head coach, a few of which will be tap-ins. And, for that, he is being paid, it is suggested, £7.5million.

, that is nice work if you can get it. And, for some reason or other, he does not have to start work until next year, which is quite bizarre.

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You could say Tuchel’s salary is the going rate for an elite coach or you could even frame his FA contract as representing a pay cut, considering what he earned with Chelsea and Bayern Munich most recently, but this is a part-time gig. Tuchel will not have to get involved with the St George’s Park routine when there are no senior fixtures - he has been hired for the matches, specifically for the matches in the summer of 2026.

Quite why he is not starting immediately is, frankly, ridiculous. International managers consistently moan about not having enough time with the players. Despite there being only 602 days until the World Cup, it seems Tuchel is happy to have another two and a half months on holiday before getting cracking. Perhaps he wanted Christmas off.

Whatever the contractual complexities, the FA should have had him at his desk this morning. When he actually starts in January, Tuchel becomes, by a considerable margin, the highest-paid manager in international football.

His is not the Impossible Job, it’s the cushy job. No wonder he could not stop grinning at Wembley. Fabio Capello took the Football Association for mugs, let’s hope no-one is saying the same when Tuchel’s lucrative tenure comes to an end.

They won’t if he wins the World Cup, of course - and he has a chance of doing that, considering the players available to him and their recent track record in tournaments. But Lee Carsley would have had a chance and his appointment would have represented an affirmation of what St George’s Park is all about.

Thankfully, in everyday life in this country, nationality is wonderfully irrelevant. But nationality is what international sport is all about. That is why it is different. It has become the norm to disparagingly refer to anyone who believes the national manager should be English as a ‘little Englander’.

But there is nothing wrong with believing international sport should be the best from one country against the best from another. And especially as there are plenty of English coaches with the capability of doing the job well.

The England manager’s job should be what every ambitious English coach aspires to. One of the fantastic things about Spain’s success is that it has been achieved with a man at the helm, Luis de la Feunte, who has come up through the ranks and has nurtured a bond with players and with the fans and with the country. And he is paid about a million pounds a year.

There is no doubt Tuchel is proud to represent a country he has clearly come to like but a bigger attraction of the job would probably have been the extremely well-remunerated novelty of it. And let’s face it, Tuchel will either be a national hero in England or a national hero in Germany when he walks away to take his next plum club job.

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