Wayne Rooney finds watching ‘nonsense’ England games boring | Football
England legend goalscorer Wayne Rooney finds watching the national team in “nonsense” games boring and believes it puts head coach Thomas Tuchel in a no-win situation.
The German’s first three competitive matches have seen him beat Albania 2-0, Latvia 3-0 and Andorra 1-0 in World Cup qualifiers but Rooney has not found it entertaining.
‘Watching England now and some of the games you know they’re going to win it’s a bit boring,’ he told The Wayne Rooney Show.
‘The last few games, it was against Andorra or something like that. It was painful. Obviously getting into the tournament, that’s when you enjoy it.
‘(I feel) sorry for Thomas Tuchel because he probably wants a decent game where he can go and show what he can do. It’s a no-win (situation) really.
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‘He’s a top manager and I know he’s maybe got a little bit of stick about the way that England played – those games are just nonsense really.
‘You turn up and you just know England’s gonna win the game. It’s 10 men sat behind the ball and you’ve got to break them down, which is not easy against any team.’
Real Quick Tho: Has Thomas Tuchel Already Lost the England Fans?
The return of international football feels an appropriate time to hold my hands up and confess it looks like I got it wrong with Thomas Tuchel.
At the time of his controversial appointment as Gareth Southgate’s successor I saw no issue with hiring seasoned winner to replace England’s ultimate nearly-man.
It was obvious, even to his staunchest supporters, that his nationality would prove the easiest and most convenient stick with which to beat him at the first sign of trouble, and so it has proved.
Really, however, Tuchel’s critics would garner far more credit by focusing on the mounting dossier of evidence on the pitch, as well as his increasingly bizarre squad selections, rather than using his birth certificate as some sort of smoking gun.
Thus far, Tuchel has presided over three hugely uninspiring victories, including a pure 1-0 stodgefest away from home against Saturday’s opponents Andorra, as well as a chaotic 3-1 defeat against a rampant Senegal back in June.
The hope must be that once England have navigated the road to the World Cup, as they surely will regardless of any teething troubles, that Tuchel’s big game experience will come into its own.
We’ll likely learn little over the course of the next week about the direction this England side are headed given the level of opposition.
The sight of Jordan Henderson and Ruben Loftus-Cheek, two players who surely should have served their purpose as England players four years ago, teaming up in midfield will do little to inspire confidence and subdue the growing anti-Tuchel sentiment.
Tuchel, meanwhile, likened the challenge of breaking down Andorra to ‘chewing gum’ and wants England to show “more enthusiasm” than they did against the minnows in June’s narrow win.
The road to next summer’s World Cup continues with Saturday’s Villa Park clash against the 174th-ranked side before attention turns to Tuesday’s tough-looking trip to Serbia.
It would be an almighty shock if England head to Belgrade on the back of anything other than a victory considering Andorra have lost all seven of the nations’ previous meetings without so much as scoring a goal.
But the microstate made life hard for Tuchel’s side in June, when the candid coach said his team “played with fire” due to their lack of “seriousness and urgency” in a stuttering 1-0 win.
‘I didn’t like, it’s also down to me,’ the England boss said as he reflected on a night in Barcelona where his side were booed. ‘The structure was not ideal to speed the game up.
‘We made it a bit too easy for Andorra to find the moments to close us down and to find the right moments to slow our game down.
‘We tried already to give some new solutions to the players, to break down the block a bit easier, to be more aggressive.
‘But we always have to balance our expectations because Andorra is a well-drilled team. I know it sounds maybe silly, but it is like this.
‘It’s a well-drilled team in a 5-4-1. They know what they’re doing. They do this, eight, 10 years I think with the same coach.
‘They will know everything about us because everything is available, they will be very well prepared.
‘It can also feel a little bit like chewing gum to break a block down like this but in general we have to play with more energy, we have to play with more enthusiasm and so far I’m pretty sure that we will.’
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Wayne Rooney finds watching ‘nonsense’ England games boring | Football
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