Steve Borthwick holds Thomas Tuchel talks as England boss plans recove | Rugby | Sport
England boss Steve Borthwick picked the brains of his footballing counterpart Thomas Tuchel on Tuesday as he bids to halt his side’s Six Nations slide. Tuchel and a delegation from the FA watched training at England’s Bagshot base as the squad prepared for Saturday’s clash with Italy. The German has won nine out of 10 games in charge of the national side and guided them to a clean sweep in World Cup qualification.
And he was joined by John McDermott, the FA Technical Director, assistant coaches Anthony Barry and Justin Cochrane plus goalkeeping coach Henrique Hilario to watch Borthwick put his team through their paces. Tuchel and his coaching group swapped ideas with their rugby equivalents about preparing players for the leap from domestic to international sport.
And players quizzed Tuchel on his selection policy and team announcements before the coaches had a debrief at the team hotel. Borthwick said: “One of the conversations we’ve had, was that challenge of how you prepare a team from domestic competition to international competition and what the differences between the two are.
“How you bridge that, how you deal with that. They have very, very small windows of preparation time – that certainly interested me. And they shared some reflections upon our training today, which were live reflections, which was really helpful.
“The players were very interested to chat with Thomas about selection and when they name their team. We name early in the week and theirs’ is different and the players were talking about the pros and cons of that and how that helped them. There’s always plenty we can learn, and we’ve got to be really curious about what people think and what
Borthwick is always keen to bend the ear of coaches from other sports and keeps in touch with Gareth Southgate, who he first met through Eddie Jones, whilst Tuesday’s meeting was facilitated by Kevin Sinfield.
Borthwick also visited the England cricket coaching team, headed up by Brendon McCullum, the inspiration behind ‘Bazball’ last year and has taken advice from them about the pressure of being an England head coach.
Borthwick added: “With Gareth and Brendon I’ve talked about those expectations that are placed on their England teams and how they’ve dealt with it. It was my first time meeting Thomas today, so I’ve not had that conversation but I chat with football managers quite often.
“I find that when you’re chatting to people who currently manage or have managed in the Premier League, that expectation, the feeling of the consequences, that’s something that comes across really strongly. I talk about to them about how they manage it with their group.
“If you win, yes praise them for what they did well, but make sure they understand what they can do better, that’s something that comes across strongly. We live in a society now where there is these extremes, there is this polarity, I can’t do anything about what’s outside, what I can do is about what’s inside. Which is, let’s concentrate on what the main thing is, let’s keep that.”
