00:00England have certainly come close to winning major honours in international football in the last few years.
00:07Under Gareth Southgate, they got to two European Championship finals and a World Cup semi-final and quarter-final.
00:14But ultimately, on all of those occasions, they fell short.
00:17And that's been a point of frustration for England because many say that this side, that they have a present with the players that are available to them,
00:25are some of the best in the international football world.
00:28And getting over the line, whilst they have these players at their disposal, is of the utmost importance.
00:35It is still since 1966, since England last won anything in international football, that being the World Cup, on their home soil.
00:43But is now perhaps a better chance than ever under Thomas Tuchel, with the World Cup fast approaching in the summer to come in America, Canada and Mexico,
00:53to finally end all of the years of hurt.
00:56Well, can England actually do it? Can they finally put all of the hardships and hurt in the previous years behind them?
01:04Well, in their most recent performance in World Cup qualifying, in which they pretty much guaranteed their qualification for the World Cup,
01:11Thomas Tuchel's side won 5-0 against Serbia away from home in what was their best performance under Tuchel as head coach.
01:18And after the game, Tuchel spoke about looking ahead to the World Cup and just where England are at this point.
01:24That's exactly what we needed. I said yesterday, I have the feeling that this game and this occasion will bring out the best in us.
01:33And I feel that I had a point. I told the players, I did not only tell you that we have a brilliant camp and I love what I see and I feel what I feel during camp on a daily basis.
01:48Then we had a bit of a stop-start game against Andorra and the result was maybe not the result that everyone expected from us and I kept them in the belief.
02:04But at some point you need to prove it also as a player that it's not just words from your coach and they kept on doing and I think they kept on believing and they felt themselves that this is the spirit that we need in camp
02:19and that will give us the extra level of quality because just today I think we saw a hard-working team and we saw a team that worked together non-stop.
02:31They never stopped working, they never stopped pressing, they never stopped defending, they never stopped helping each other out and that's how it should be.
02:40Hi Thomas. It was important to get five different goal scorers. Sometimes when Harry Kane plays, they call it the Harry Kane team when he plays and there's a lot of pressure on him to score as well.
02:52Yeah, but he plays also very selfless. Look at him, Harry is the first one today to initiate the press.
02:58He dropped a bit more in midfield because we felt and he felt that they don't follow him as aggressive as the team from Andorra.
03:08You know guys, I said we put all the effort in against Andorra but you don't get the praise for it so today I'm happy that the players get the reward
03:17and that they have this outstanding result in a very, very difficult environment that they performed on this level and it's of course it's a perfect result and it's a perfect moment for having five different goal scorers of course.
03:32Hello, Thomas. You mentioned before you wanted competition in the group. There's a few players that are missing today. Is this performance a good message to them that no places are guaranteed this is a good message?
03:44The message is first of all to us and to this group, what this group did. I told you that I learned that this is international football, you can have your ideas whom you want to nominate but then comes the last weekend and players are out and players are injured and players feel something and then you have to make hard decisions on some positions.
04:04So it is also on me to take these decisions. We took the group that was available and we took the group that we made available for us because we thought it's the right thing to do to start in this season with this group and they proved the point in camp every day.
04:22Certainly interesting comments from Tuchel there. Clearly England could have been or could have put out a stronger side against Serbia given the players that weren't available to them because of injury and other reasons.
04:33So that begs the question as to what sort of a side England will play when the World Cup does roll around but that is for then and for now Tuchel needs to keep progressing his team.
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