It’s Thomas Tuchel time; we don’t need to fall in love with this one…

Thomas Tuchel’s first fixtures as national coach: England v Optimism on Friday and then England v Triumphalism on Monday.

If Tuchel’s debut selection were to fail to impress in the opening game, they will instead face the winner of Scepticism and Cynicism in the second fixture.

The very best of Albanian and Latvian football will line up against Tuchel’s team on the field at Wembley but his real opponents are us and our fluctuating feelings towards dear England. They don’t take long to surface.

I didn’t attend the unveiling of Paolo Nicolato as Latvia coach but I don’t think he was asked any questions about his team’s ability to cope with the heat in Houston next year. Latvia won’t be there.

England will. Qualification is as certain as death and taxes. Even if Gianni Infantino gets his way and expands the World Cup field to 83 countries, four planets, Inter Miami and any newly annexed states of America in the next 15 months, Latvia won’t make it. Tuchel’s England are not competing with them but rather our expectations of him.

The eight qualifiers that England will play between now and next November are no more than trial matches that are often a trial to watch – staged auditions for Tuchel to whittle down his initial pool of 55 to a core group of 23, then drop Marcus Rashford, add Kalvin Phillips and set off for America with our hopes, prayers and black caps of judgment in tow.

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Most of us will have decided whether he’s innocent or guilty long before then – maybe as early as half-time on Friday. It’s a part-time job with full-time scrutiny. Every quiver of his lips will be analysed from here, particularly during the National Anthem. The mood of the nation will be directed at him.

Tuchel made a good first impression. If nothing else, the selection of Jordan Henderson has told us he doesn’t give a flying frankfurter what we think. The final days of Sir Gareth Southgate’s time in charge were marked by more and more people turning on him for being the very man we had grown to love; his reason and realism were held against him as if they were the only thing holding the team back from becoming world beaters. Sorry Thomas, but it never ends well.

They fit you for an FA tracksuit on the first day, then hand you a blazer, then a white coat, then a hard hat and finally a camouflage jacket to smuggle you out of the back door. The post of England manager is 100 jobs in one. You can get the boot from 99 of them for a mistake in any one of those jobs.

Being a nice guy doesn’t match the nation’s idea of what’s needed to be a success in the Dragon’s Den of football. It’s a miracle that Southgate’s dignified sanity survived as long as it did. If Peter Jones had been recruiting, Sir Gareth would not have been allowed into the lift. Tuchel has not been hired to create any pathways or legacy for the medium term and beyond; he’s been head-hunted to win the World Cup. We don’t need to fall in love with this one.

READ: 16 Conclusions on Tuchel’s first England squad: Henderson, Rashford in, Forest, LGBTQ+ ignored

Tuchel’s nationality doesn’t bother me because there wasn’t a succession candidate, nobody available that could capture the English essence with Southgate’s decency and diplomacy. A hired hand with no obligation to kiss the badge was the perversely obvious alternative. Almost an antidote.

Tuchel is just doing his next job. His CV is all that is really on the line.

When the white noise begins to swirl around the white shirts and everyone from Piers Morgan to the Loose Women are discussing the left-back options, when the tournament cabin fever takes hold and we look to the psychic powers of prediction of random zoo animals, this England manager will be blessed by a German sense of humour. He won’t get it.

He’s smart enough to know that he’ll need to massage the media. Those chummy photo opportunity invitations to journalists to come into camp and play darts against the guys are a tournament tactic as valid as inverted full-backs. Just so long as Jude doesn’t start aiming his arrows at a questioner’s head, they forge a truce – a Christmas Day kickabout with the enemy before the resumption of trench warfare on match days.

The only fun and games Tuchel has got to win start in June next year. Putting Albania and Latvia in their place in the world order will manage expectations to a point but if he doesn’t find ways to take the jeopardy out of qualification before next season starts, he might be seeing more of his children at home than planned. We are at the Bootcamp and Judges’ Houses stage only.

I used to love prepping for these qualifying games in my ITV days, watching tapes of San Marino and trying to recognise the bank clerk from the taxi driver.

A quick scan of the week’s fixtures gives you a fascinating overview of the scale and reach of the World Cup. In what other sporting event would Qatar be taking on North Korea? It’s difficult to fathom how Kuwait can be visiting Iraq this week (in a rematch of their 1990 encounter!). And then June sees Bermuda take on Cayman Islands – the so-called Tyldesley private bank accounts derby.

Like a works team getting to play in the first Preliminary Round of the FA Cup, I’ve no problem with every outcrop on the planet having its moment in the World Cup sunshine but these first two games of the new man’s reign are no more than Armand Duplantis skipping over the clearing heights without getting his pole out of its casing.

Sir Gareth kindly raised the bar to something close to the world’s best and our hopes and fears along with it. Tuchel Time begins next year.

You can sign up for Clive’s Substack here. You won’t regret it.