Thomas Tuchel: England’s ‘absentee manager’ is ‘based in GERMANY’ and spending time with his KIDS

Thomas Tuchel has been spending some time with his children despite being England football manager, and because the world is insane this is very serious and bad news.

Part-time Tuchel
It is Mediawatch’s solemn duty to report that the English media has done another English media about the England football manager being a bloody German. And a lazy German at that, it can now be revealed.

Matt Lawton has just about managed to contain his righteous anger long enough to get this important story out there.

The FA is allowing Thomas Tuchel the flexibility to make regular trips back to Germany to see his family…

We’re just going to interrupt here to briefly touch on how batsh*t insane a reflection of Britain, football, the media, and the British football media it is that this is the intro not to a story about the benefits of a sensible work-life balance but a full, no-holds barred hatchet job on a football manager who won’t even take charge of his first game in his new job for another month.

…even though it has meant him missing three Premier League weekends, the third round of the FA Cup and all four Carabao Cup semi-final matches in his first 6½ weeks as England head coach.

Right, it’s not the main issue at all, but we are extremely rattled by six-and-a-half weeks being written like that. What has become of the one-time paper of record?

The 51-year-old German’s first game is a World Cup qualifier against Albania on March 21, but The Times can reveal that his Wembley employers have reached an understanding whereby he can return home to see the two children he has with his ex-wife even if it means losing out on the opportunity to see England’s international players in action.

Very suspicious and above all very German behaviour to want to see your kids, isn’t it? How dare he not be spending every single minute of every single day plotting Albania’s demise? Does he not even realise he now has the most important job in the country and therefore by definition the entire world? An Englishman would understand this. A foreign cannot.

But has he in fact even really lost out on the opportunity to see England’s players in action? The Times have helpfully put together their own list of the games he’s attended when he can be bothered.

And it turns out that in his first ‘6½ weeks’ as England manager he has seen 15 of the 20 Premier League clubs live at least once, as well as games involving Milan, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid that of course could not have any possible value whatsoever for an England manager wanting to see England players in action.

The only Premier League teams he is yet to see play live are the current bottom three plus Fulham and Brentford.

This seems… absolutely fine? And he’s still been able to spend quality time with his family. Call Mediawatch a daft snowflake hopelessly infected by the woke mind virus if you must, but this seems like it’s a good news story, if indeed a news story at all.

And you know what else? We also now have this invention called television, and wild as it may sound it is possible to watch football matches on it! You can even, and you may want to sit down lest your mind be blown apart entirely here, watch matches on TV that have already happened!

What a time to be alive.

Mediawatch also has little time for this kind of tactic:

The FA insists he has made numerous visits to St George’s Park.

That’s just language designed to deceive, isn’t it? Phrasing meant specifically to inject doubt where none exists. Who has suggested Tuchel hasn’t made numerous visits to St George’s Park? Nobody. But that ‘The FA insists’ turns an accepted fact into a mere claim. It’s just petty and childish, which sums up this whole sorry mess, really.

There’s also this fully fledged bastard of a good point from the FA buried deep, deep down:

The FA also points to the fact that Sarina Wiegman has enjoyed major success with the England women’s team while commuting from her family home in the Netherlands.

But the genuine belly laughs are saved for the punchline.

When Sven-Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello managed England – the only other foreign coaches to have taken charge of the men’s national team – they lived in London and spent the majority of their time between international breaks attending club games.

First, that is extremely woolly language. Did those guys really spend ‘the majority of their time’ attending club games between international breaks? We’re pretty sure Sven, god rest his soul, did not spend the majority of his time attending club games.

Second, spending the ‘majority of their time… attending club games’ didn’t seem to offer much protection from press savagings anyway, and nor did it lead in Capello’s case particularly to great success.

And third, when those two were in charge of England, you could reliably pick about 90 per cent of the squad from four clubs and Wyscout was barely a thing. Of course they attended games.

There’s more in here we could pick at and pull apart, but it’s unedifying and boring. Can Mediawatch instead just ask that we all just not do this? Can we just agree to not set about tearing the new England manager apart before he’s even picked his first squad, let alone managed his first game? Is that really too much to ask?

MORE ON THOMAS TUCHEL’S UNFORGIVABLE DECISION TO BE FOREIGN
👉 GERMAN sparks ‘humiliating farce’ as England players withdraw…
👉 ‘Merchants of Woke’, ‘dark days’ and the end of ‘England DNA’ as GERMAN Tuchel named manager

Tuch base
And, with grim inevitability, where The Times tiptoes along the tabloids will follow to stomp away any lingering finesse and nuance at all. Here comes The Sun, tubthumping the remaining actual facts into oblivion.

NEW England boss Thomas Tuchel has struck a deal with the FA to be based in Germany.

Nope. Think we made it clear we have multiple issues with that Times story, but that is not at all what they claimed or even suggested.

Absent minded
And then there’s the Mail with this.

Thomas Tuchel has reportedly missed more than half of the Premier League weekends as England’s new absentee manager.

Christ. Even if you think attending only 17 matches in 47 days qualifies for that ‘absentee manager’ barb (HINT: it does not) do… do they really think that ‘attending matches in person’ is the entirety of an England manager’s job between international breaks?

The fallen Maradona with the big boobies
Surprisingly this headline comes from The Sun, a paper and now website from which one has come to expect more sober and thoughtful analysis of world events.

‘Man Utd directors should be arrested’ – How Scott McTominay proved old bosses wrong and became Napoli’s ‘new Maradona’

Now we have a lot of time for Scott McTominay, a decent footballer and dare we say it one who was underappreciated at Man United and one whose success since leaving slightly embarrasses them. But who is calling him the ‘new Maradona’ for crying out loud?

Someone must be, for it is right there in quote marks to indicate that it is a quote of a thing that someone has said.

The first quote is mad but it is at least real, from Paolo Di Canio. That’s fine. But not even he is calling McTominay the ‘new Maradona’ is he? Surely not.

Dear reader, we fear you already know who has called Scott f**king McTominay the ‘new Maradona’. It is, of course, nobody. Nobody has called him that.

Mediawatch is painfully aware that we are howling into the void, banging our heads into a brick wall and above all becoming an old man yelling at clouds in a battle long since lost, but one more time with feeling: if you put something in quotes in a headline, it should probably be something that somebody else has said or written.

We really don’t think we’re being unreasonable here. We’ll even, against our better judgement, allow it when the quotee is a random 25-follower account on ex dot com.

Of course, even The Sun know they can’t pull that Maradona stunt in the headline and then not offer something within the copy to justify it, however flimsy. Mediawatch damn near fell off our chair when we saw just how flimsy, though.

And the former Old Trafford trainee has become so crucial to Napoli’s title charge under Antonio Conte that many regard him as a successor to Diego Maradona as the leader of the team.

Many? Name f*c*king names.

Turn, turn, turn
Just a lovely piece of Reach headline-writing artistry here for your consideration. We’re not even mad.

Mohamed Salah forces U-turn after Liverpool star puts contract theory to bed

The U-turn that Salah has forced, and the contract theory he has put to bed? Alan Shearer previously thinking, reasonably enough, that Salah’s form might ‘drop off’ due to what is, as it must always be, duly solemnly referred to by its full title here of Ongoing Contract Saga but now acknowledging that said form has not in fact dropped off.

But look at all those lovely transfery, clicky headline words that nothing of a story can produce. Beautiful, in its own way.

The sound of silence
We are, as you know, huge fans here of silences being broken (see Mediawatches passim) but we put it you, dear reader, that there is no way back for the concept after this crushingly mundane deployment of such a headline heavyweight from the Daily Star.

Man Utd’s Chido Obi, 17, breaks silence about 120 second debut against Tottenham

Who was desperately waiting on this development? Surely that can only mean it’s quite juicy, a nudge-nudge suggestion on which the intro cheerfully doubles down.

Manchester United’s latest debutant Chido Obi has spoken out after making his first-team debut.

He’s not just spoken, guys. He’s spoken out. Has he called Ruben Amorim a big Portuguese fraud for only giving him two minutes to try and change the game at Spurs? Has he told Casemiro to make way for him and his fellow youngsters, his legs having so entirely gone?

Or has he in fact just said ‘On a personal note thanks to the gaffer & the club for making a dream come true for me and my family.’?

Oof. Another wildly outspoken young hothead like that is the last thing United need.