World Cup 2026: Jude Bellingham and Thomas Tuchel’s ‘battle of wills’ is healthy for England | Football News

Passionate, driven, uncompromising. Those are terms that can be equally applied to both Thomas Tuchel and Jude Bellingham.

Both are supremely self-confident, honest and opinionated, and they expect the highest of standards from everyone around them. Both are winners, and want nothing more than for England to win the World Cup.

But here’s the rub – each has a different idea about how Jude Bellingham should best be utilised for England to try to achieve that goal. While the Real Madrid star has traditionally wanted a much freer role to influence the game, the head coach has told him to work within the team system he has devised.

Tuchel’s deliberate tactic has been to use more stick than carrot with his talisman, to try to mould him into an ever-better player. His praise has always been measured, monitored and carefully targeted. Like an over-strict father to his precocious son, who can’t quite find it in himself to praise his brilliant offspring in public.

The German coach has very rarely praised Bellingham’s ability, nor his unique capacity to inspire his team-mates and drive the side on to a higher level. Instead, he has focused his compliments on the moments when Bellingham has toed the line, sacrificed himself for the team, worked tirelessly off the ball.

And, it could be argued, it has worked. Bellingham has been the best form of himself for England at this World Cup – eclipsing his performances for Real where the Galactico spirit hails all things individual, all things superstar.

If you look at his statistics from the quarter-final, you get the full picture of what a complete player he is. As well as the obvious attacking prowess, where he scored more goals, had more shots, more shots on target, and had more touches in the opposition box than anyone else on the pitch, he also won more duels and was second for the number of times he successfully pressured an opponent in their own half. Tuchel can claim much credit for that all-round dominance.

The battle of wills between the two has lasted for more than 18 months. At its worst moment a year ago, it led to Tuchel ill-advisedly saying his own mother sometimes finds Bellingham “repulsive” on the pitch. That really upset Bellingham, and his family. Tuchel apologised, and it has now been mostly smoothed over.

It seemed bizarre in October when Tuchel went to extremes to try to force his message through to his star man by dropping him from the England squad completely for the friendly against Wales and the World Cup qualifier against Latvia.

Forty-eight hours before Tuchel announced his Bellingham-free squad, the 22-year-old had been named England’s player of the year. Pointedly, Tuchel didn’t sugarcoat the message by suggesting that maybe Bellingham needed a rest, or that he was nursing an old injury.

“Team spirit is the key factor in the end,” said Tuchel at the time, emphasising he wanted to stick with the players who had done well in the previous camp, when Bellingham was unavailable because of a shoulder injury.

Was that clever man-management from Tuchel? Give the superstar a kick when his nation didn’t need him, so that he is even more motivated right now when England need him desperately?

Back to this World Cup, and after the quarter-final win over Norway in Miami, Bellingham bristled when I asked him his thoughts on what Tuchel had said – namely, that overall the boss thought it was a “sloppy” team performance, and that England had ridden their luck. Bellingham’s spiky response fired back, saying Tuchel didn’t know what it was like to play in a top-level knockout game in temperatures that were the equivalent of 44 Celsius.

Was that a dig at the fact Tuchel’s short and unspectacular playing career in Germany never hit the heights before a knee injury forced him to retire at the age of 25? Probably. Bellingham had won La Liga, the UEFA Super Cup and the Champions League by the age of 22.

There was mitigation for both, in what each said post match. And both were correct in their sentiment. Bellingham was utterly drained. He had given his all, and then some. You could see it in his eyes. And he was still elated from making it to his first World Cup semi-final, when in walked the Sky Sports News journalist to tell him that his boss had just said he wasn’t happy with the performance. Bellingham’s response was perfectly understandable.

As for Tuchel, he was right to say that England’s performance was lacking quality [with the notable exception of Bellingham and a handful of others], that England rode their luck with Norway’s disallowed goal and the mysterious “spidercam wire” shenanigans. He was also absolutely correct to suggest England will need to play much better if they are to beat Argentina in the semi-final, and then either Spain or France in the World Cup final. It was a spontaneous spilling of bile, but it was also a call to arms for the squad.

Bellingham was right too. He felt that Tuchel was diminishing the Goliath-like effort that he and his England team-mates had put in, in the most humid and difficult conditions that any of them had ever played in. Bellingham speaking up for his team-mates, praising their efforts and sheer will to win was admirable. And ironically, it was exactly the sort of collective-feeling Tuchel had been calling for from the Real man for months.

So, forget any suggestion there is a rift between Tuchel and Bellingham. There isn’t. There are just two hyper-competitive, super-passionate sportsmen, at the top of their game, driving each other to new heights. This love-hate relationship has been going on ever since The Football Association appointed a new head coach 18 months ago.

Everything you have seen from the two, and between the two, men is positive, it’s healthy, and it’s great news for England in their hopes of winning the World Cup.