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It was in a Munich Cafe in the autumn of last year that England’s journey to the 2026 World Cup finals began. Thomas Tuchel sat at a table with his assistant and friend Anthony Barry and they asked themselves if they could really put a second World Cup star on the England jersey. They decided that they had the players and that between them they had the expertise. But they also knew that this alone would not be enough. ‘The environment in America next summer will not facilitate world class football,’ says Barry, the England assistant manager, rather frankly. ‘So it's going to be a tournament of moments. You're not going to see the best team playing the best football. I think it simply doesn't allow that. ‘This World Cup will be won, I say again, by a team, because you're going have to suffer.’ Next summer’s FIFA jamboree will be unique. It will be played across three countries - America, Canada and Mexico – and over five weeks rather than four, with a knockout round of 32 squeezed in after the group stages. It will take eight games to win it, rather than seven. And it will be hot, devastatingly hot. Tuchel and his team of coaches can only control so much of this but they believe they are starting to hit upon a formula. After a difficult start that encompassed unconvincing wins over Andorra and a home friendly defeat to Senegal, England have secured their place in America via impressive wins against Serbia and Latvia with a thumping of Wales in a friendly sandwiched in between. Some big calls have been made already, with Jude Bellingham left out of the October squad, as Tuchel and Barry have sought to forge a ‘Team England’ mentality that eliminates ego and works off the back of meritocracy and common ideas. ‘In international football, you will never create a team that can play like the Barcelona of old or the recent Man City,’ adds Barry. ‘But if you can create a brotherhood, a connection, an energy between each other, then that is the petrol in the car in international football.’ It sounds good while it works and recently it has. Will it continue? Let’s see. Just as importantly, meanwhile, is the matter of how England play. Tuchel has already spoken of wanting England to look and feel like a Premier League team and this is a theme picked up by Barry as he sits down to talk at St George’s Park. A highly respected young coach who Tuchel took to Bayern Munich after inheriting him from Frank Lampard at Chelsea, Barry has also worked with the Republic of Ireland and with Belgium and Portugal at major tournaments. Famously, he is also the author of a much talked-about dissertation that he submitted when taking his FA Pro-Licence six years ago. Barry sifted through 60 hours of footage to analyse all 16,154 throw-ins from the 2018-19 Premier League season. He called it ‘the undervalued set piece’ which is pertinent now that such things have returned to fashion in the English top flight. ‘Back then Liverpool were getting a throw-in coach and Paul Merson had just said “the game's gone”,’ Barry smiles. ‘And, typical me, I just wanted to know who was right. So I tried to look into it ‘I think they are as important as ever now. They're just trendier. Nothing's changed. ‘I don't understand why now we speak about it almost as a separate sport. That's simply the wrong perspective. You win a game and a football match, however, you can. ‘To me the England jersey should be harder than ever to get but light to wear. ‘And to make it light to wear, we have to give the players a style. The shirt should feel like a cape and not body armour. ‘So if we want to build a multi-weapon England team, then we have to be good in every aspect of the game. Set-pieces will be part of that.’ Not withstanding all of that, Barry does think he has seen a change in the way football in England and across Europe is being played. ‘In the middle area of the pitch – those 24 metres either side of the half way line – we really feel the game has become stuck, particularly in the Premier League,’ he says, pointing to a pitch stencilled on to the table in front of him. ‘Everybody is so good now. They have so much information. They know how to set up. Mid-blocks, deep blocks. And the game can really get stuck there. ‘So we are really trying to focus on trying to accelerate the game across that 24 metres and beyond. ‘Day to day, we try to develop the methodology that gives us the best chance of building a world-class, multi-weaponed England team that is capable of winning the World Cup inside the 50 training days that we have. That’s what we have to build. ‘Thomas and I are very greedy. We want to dominate every aspect of the game. We want to conquer every metre of the pitch and that’s what we spend many of our days on. It’s our job not only to stay ahead of the trends but to beat them and create our own.’ Barry, a 39-year-old Liverpudlian, played 279 league games as a midfielder for clubs such as Accrington, Chester, Wrexham and Fleetwood. Not long after the age of 30, he had turned his mind to coaching. Part of his early learnings came from coaching under-16s at Accrington and he even spent an afternoon putting on a clinic in a prison. ‘The under-16s was in the evening,’ he smiles. ‘Third of a pitch. Flat balls. Not enough bibs. But I was hooked. ‘In my mind it was a top session but you'd have to ask the kids. ‘I knew I'd fallen in love with it straightaway. I got a better feeling that night than I did from playing at Wembley. ‘I thought about what it could become. I'm pretty sure nobody else could see it. But that's part of dreams. ‘What I could tell 16-year-olds back then was probably not a lot. But to see their faces light up, the honest way they play the game. ‘The challenge to coach senior players and elite players is a different stimulation altogether but I get the same joy from it. ‘I still believe at heart players are still that little boy that just wants to play. And if you can connect with that, then you've normally gone on the right path.’ That plays to much of what Tuchel has already spoken about in relation to the atmosphere he wishes to create with England. Barry also talks at length about it. ‘No player has ever won a World Cup on his own,’ he nods. ‘We try to build a team and there’s many factors that go into that. ‘The form of the players at their club. How are they presenting? How are they behaving? How are they playing? How do they behave as a team-mate for us? ‘If you build a band and put 11 lead singers on the stage and throw them one mic will they produce top music? I'm pretty sure it won't happen. ‘You need drummers, you need guitars, you need backing singers. What we try to build here is a team is because a team wins titles.’ With Bellingham now back in the squad ahead of Thursday’s dead rubber game with Serbia at Wembley and another that follows in Albania three days later, Tuchel and his staff will feel that they have made their point several times over. Call ups for players such as Bournemouth’s Alex Scott and the exclusion of Arsenal’s Myles Lewis-Skelly points to another recurring theme. ‘Competition is fierce,’ adds Barry. ‘The fight is on.’ In terms of his relationship with his friend and boss, Barry is expansive. Late night Watsapps and long phone calls feature prominently while the night before we meet the England coaching staff had been together in a video room watching feeds from all the night’s Champions League matches. The bond between two men who have already known each other five years is clear. ‘To say I fell in love with him wouldn’t be an overstatement,’ he laughs. ‘He swept into Chelsea. He floated in. ‘I’ve never seen anything like him in terms of personality and way of working. ‘He was almost like a UFO. ‘There’s something about Thomas. There’s stardust there, something special. It’s the X-factor that we all look for. ‘I’m not sure you can learn it. I think it’s God given. And to this day he still has it.’
