Thomas Tuchel says England go into the World Cup with “full belief” they can go a long way, but the build-up is already being shaped by heat, squad management and a title-or-bust standard. The FA hired him to give England the best possible chance of winning the tournament, and Tuchel has been equally blunt about the target. “The target is nothing else but the biggest one in world football,” he said.

How England are preparing for the heat

The most revealing part of England’s preparation is the scale of it. They will spend 10 days in a hot-weather acclimatisation camp in West Palm Beach, after the FA built specialist heat chambers in Barcelona in June last year to replicate temperatures in the high-30s Celsius with humidity of around 75 per cent.

Players were also asked to swallow biometric tablets so FA specialists could monitor internal temperatures and other key data during training. Every player was ranked on how quickly they could recover after heat exposure. That is a serious attempt to remove as many unknowns as possible before a tournament in which Tuchel has already warned that heat and humidity will be a problem after a long season.

Tuchel said the conditions are “not our biggest enemy” but are still “not to our advantage”. He also added that the first game against Croatia on June 17 is indoors and air conditioned, so it “should not be a problem”, before stressing that England will have to adapt after that.

Why the squad calls still matter

The preparation would feel neat if the squad itself were settled, but it is not that simple. Four Arsenal players, Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Noni Madueke and Ebere Eze, have been given extra time off after the Champions League final. Tuchel expects those players, along with Dean Henderson, to miss the New Zealand friendly on Saturday but be back for the Costa Rica game four days later in Orlando.

That kind of management is sensible, but it also shows how much is being juggled at once. England finished qualification with 8 wins from 8 and did not concede a single goal, so the baseline is already high. They are also top seeds in Group L, which means the expectation around this squad is not just progression, but a serious run.

There is still a fair argument over whether the final route is fully known from the information available here. What is certain is the immediate picture: a heavily prepared camp, a demanding climate, and a manager who has publicly tied his job to the biggest prize in the game. England are being set up to win it, and anything less will feel short of the point.

Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 6 outlets. How we work →