Amorim Man Utd honeymoon over with ‘concerns raised’ as Tuchel wastes ‘precious time’

Editor F365
England manager Thomas Tuchel
New England manager Thomas Tuchel

The football press pack knew precisely which German football manager they wanted to write about today, and it isn’t the one everyone is now talking about.

 

German… bloke
We have plenty of sympathy. The November international break is not Mediawatch’s favourite time of the year either and we can only imagine how much of a pain in the crack it must be for proper actual football journalists.

What the football press-pack hivemind has thus decided to do to fill the expected if no longer actual news blackhole is go all out for Thomas Tuchel before he even starts his job and the fact he isn’t in charge for this last pair of Nations League matches.

It is sub-optimal for sure. We don’t really buy his press-conference argument of wanting  the ‘clarity’ of focusing on purely the World Cup campaign and suspect some behind-the-scenes jiggery-pokery regarding contractual clauses and gardening leave and availability of backroom staff may have had some role to play.

But it is what it is, and the press-pack’s collective line on this now requires them to straddle the delicate balance between bemoaning the pointless futility of the November international break while also lamenting the vital preparation time part-time Tuchel has apparently so casually tossed aside.

Dave Kidd leads the charge in The Sun. He begins:

LEE CARSLEY will conduct four rounds of media interviews in five days during the next week.

Before and after England’s Nations League matches against Greece in Athens and the Republic of Ireland at Wembley, we’re expected to ask the Three Lions interim manager some questions.

You get in there Dave and make it all about you.

Mediawatch will never tire of enjoying the vast continent-sized gulf between how much journalists think people care about the day-to-day details of their job and how little people actually care. We literally write a daily column about these lads and even we cannot muster an ounce of interest in Kidd’s concerns about the newsworthiness or otherwise of some press conferences.

Yet, with genuine respect for an excellent coach and a decent man, there are only three questions I can think of.

These are: ‘Where are all the players you picked last week?’

‘What are you still doing here?’ and ‘Where’s the German bloke?’

How many questions do you need to ask at a press conference, Dave? That seems plenty, really. Mediawatch is already amused at the very thought of the cryarsing that would ensue from poor journalists if any one of these apparently superfluous media rounds was cancelled.

Still, at least he called Tuchel the ‘German bloke’. Could have been much worse. And, of course, that’s another source of the fun in all this, isn’t it? These Tuchel-damning missives have all been written well in advance, all carefully prepared for what was understandably expected to be a barren Tuesday morning news wasteland.

There’s no criticism here for the eager newshounds of The Sun and elsewhere failing to predict Cootegate exploding on to the scene, but it is another reminder about just how seriously to take any of this stuff. Which is not seriously at all. Remember, Poppygate all started from a Daily Mail journalist staring at a blank page.

Anyway. Now comes the tricky part. Kidd must strike that delicate balance here. He must stress that the November international break is unwanted and unloved before going on to get very angry about Tuchel not bothering with it. We’re not sure he quite pulls it off.

The November international break, coming so soon after the September and October breaks, is the least wonderful time of the year for football fans.

It’s the time when we start sounding like dear old Brenda from Bristol being vox-popped by BBC News after the calling of a snap general election in 2017.

‘You’re joking? Not ANOTHER one? Oh for God’s sake, honestly, I can’t stand this.’

Lovely reference. And straight into:

England will play 16 or 17 matches between now and the start of the World Cup, due to be staged either side of Donald Trump’s bloody great wall in 2026. So why would Tuchel pass up the opportunity to take charge of the first two of them?

Because it’s the least wonderful time of the year?

When Tuchel was appointed last month, it felt extraordinary that he wasn’t going to start work until January and, now that this godforsaken hiatus in the domestic schedule is upon us, doubly so.

But does it still feel like that now a lovely juicy scandal has filled that terrifying void?

 

Let’s take our precious time about it
There’s another factor at play with the pre-emptive Tuchel bashing of course: the ground being prepared for his near-inevitable eventual failure.

This is a complete free hit for every journalist out there with column inches that needed filling before a video of a referee torpedoing his career in spectacularly sweary style at the deadest looking afters imaginable came along and shook everything up.

Kidd hints at it, but the Telegraph’s Jason Burt tackles it head on. It’s a full kicking for Tuchel before he’s even started, this one. Given that a) Tuchel’s express target is to win the World Cup and therefore b) no matter how good or bad a job he does that is a mission that is obviously likely to end in failure of some kind, we arrive at c) We Told You So.

If/when England disgracefully fail to win the World Cup under the German bloke, there is a ready-made, nice and easy stick to beat him with that will require absolutely no thought or analysis. It will feel true whether or not it actually was, and that’s the real quiz.

Whatever happens with Thomas Tuchel during his 18 months as England’s next head coach he cannot make the familiar excuse of an international manager. Tuchel can never claim that he did not have enough time to work with the players; that he had too few training sessions.

Why? Because Tuchel gave up the chance to take the job immediately. He decided against being in charge for the final camp of the year – this week’s Nations League fixtures away against Greece and at home versus the Republic of Ireland. He decided against that precious time.

There you have it. This is all squirrelled away to be sprung as a Gotcha in 2026. And if, heaven forbid, England actually do win the World Cup? Well… they won’t remember. It’s perfect.

 

With a bullet
Just in case the subtlety of Burt’s piece passed you by, there’s a handy tweet from the Telegraph to help you grasp it.

Mediawatch has always thought the absolute best way to use bullet points is to have them:

  • Say the same thing in slightly different ways
  • Repeat the same general message multiple times but with some changes to the words
  • All contain the same information and express the same point, albeit with some alteration to the language and phrasing.

 

Much more serious than that
There is, inevitably, a great deal of beard-stroking and opining dedicated to a referee calling Jurgen Klopp a German c**t while knowing he was being filmed. It is undeniably an absolute mad thing to have happened, and the general thrust of much of the reaction is dedicated to how it all provides fuel to football’s dullest bores: the conspiracy theorists.

It is a point made in the Telegraph by Thom Gibbs, who was doing it really rather well right up until he wasn’t. Mediawatch is still scratching its head trying to work out quite how these two paragraphs can appear in the same column.

Until now it has been easy to dismiss cries of bias and imagined agendas as blinkered paranoia. It is the sort of hysteria whipped up by a fervent internet which considers Bill Shankly’s ‘much more serious than that’ quote as pathetically weak.

Mediawatch is nodding along in absolute agreement here. But then, a mere nine paragraphs later.

The main impact though will be a lingering stench of the official who blew the illusion of neutrality. It will stick like a discredited doctor linking vaccines to autism.

Let’s just say it’s bold to evoke Shankly’s infamous line and then compare a man calling another man a c**t to a very literal matter of life and death.

 

Honeymoon over
Elsewhere, Thomas Tuchel isn’t the only new manager getting a frightful kicking before he’s even got his foot in the door. The Mirror – finding a small amount of online real estate on a football homepage that currently boasts a top five entirely concerning Gary Lineker and Match of the Day – bring us the sad news that the Ruben Amorim Manchester United honeymoon is already over. There’s trouble brewing at Old Trafford and no mistake.

Man Utd dressing room’s concerns on Ruben Amorim arrival come to light

Oh no. This sounds bad. They have concerns. Concerns that have come to light. The worst kind of concerns.

Manchester United star Matthijs de Ligt admits that Ruben Amorim’s arrival might not be good news for everyone at Old Trafford.

Okay, this now sounds less like worrying concern and more like an obvious truth that accompanies the arrival of any new manager at any football club in the history new managers and football clubs. But let’s see what De Ligt actually said. Maybe he’s sat on a sofa saying Sporting are sh*t and Amorim’s an arrogant Portuguese c**t.

‘I don’t know much about him yet, but I do know that he did a good job at Sporting.’

These concerns sound very grave indeed.

‘With a new coach, it’s always a bit of a wait and see. You have to do your very best and remain yourself.’

Thanks for the memories, Ruben, but it’s time to go.

Mediawatch Ruben Amorim

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