Fun, yes – but when will Tuchel fix this England defence?

Thomas Tuchel has brought goals, flair and a sense of joy back to the England national team. The Three Lions are scoring for fun, thrilling fans with attacking football that recalls the golden days of 1966. But beneath the surface of this attacking renaissance lies a persistent, nagging problem: the defence is leaking goals at an alarming rate. And this is not merely a technical issue on the pitch — it reflects deeper questions about national strategy, institutional accountability and the role of the state in elite sport.

Since taking over from Gareth Southgate in 2025, Tuchel has overseen a dramatic shift in style. England now press high, play intricate passes through the middle and commit numbers forward. The results have been spectacular in attack — 14 goals in the last five matches, including a 4-3 thriller against Germany. Yet the same period has seen nine goals conceded, with opponents regularly cutting through the backline. The question is not whether Tuchel can entertain, but whether he can organise.

Context: England’s defensive struggles are nothing new. Under Southgate, the team was built on a solid, often cautious backline that prioritised structure over risk. That approach delivered a World Cup semi-final and a European Championship final, but it was criticised for being overly pragmatic. Tuchel was appointed precisely to unlock attacking potential. However, his Bayern Munich and Chelsea sides were known for defensive solidity as much as attacking verve. So why is England so porous now?

Part of the answer lies in personnel. England’s centre-back options are thin: Harry Maguire has lost form, John Stones is injury-prone and the younger generation like Marc Guéhi and Levi Colwill are still raw. Full-backs such as Kyle Walker and Kieran Trippier are ageing, while the system demands they push high, leaving space behind. Tuchel’s high line requires exceptional pace and positioning, attributes not always present in the current squad. But there is a deeper, more political dimension.

FORTIS ANALYSIS: The liberal-conservative view sees this as a failure of individual accountability and market discipline. English football has long relied on state-driven interventions — from the Premier League’s centralised commercial model to the FA’s top-down coaching curriculum — to produce talent. Yet the result is a system that stifles creativity while failing to produce elite defenders. The free market, if allowed to operate without state-imposed quotas and centrally planned development pathways, would reward clubs that invest in defensive coaching and incentivise players to specialise. Instead, the FA’s ‘England DNA’ philosophy has created a generation of players comfortable in possession but poor at the fundamentals of defending: reading the game, 1v1 duels and positional awareness.

Tuchel, a German coach with a reputation for tactical rigour, is now confronting the consequences of this over-engineered system. He cannot simply import disciplined defenders; he must work with what the domestic pipeline has delivered. The state, through the FA and government-backed academies, has effectively nationalised talent development, crowding out private initiatives that might have emphasised defensive art. A truly liberal approach would privatise coaching, allow clubs greater freedom in youth training and place the onus on individual players to develop their own defensive skills. Instead, we have a cartel of elite academies churning out similarly styled ‘ball-playing’ defenders who cannot actually defend.

Moreover, the political pressure on Tuchel is immense. The media, the public and even the government — given the national pride attached to the team — expect instant success. This short-termism, a hallmark of statist intervention, forces managers to chase quick results rather than build a long-term defensive culture. Tuchel is now caught between the demand for entertainment and the need for solidity. The answer, from a FORTIS perspective, is to strip back the bureaucratic layers, let clubs compete freely in developing defenders and allow managers like Tuchel the time and independence to impose their own systems without political interference.