It took Jude Bellingham to finally make explicit something that had only been whispered before: that when England went to Germany to compete for Euro 2024, the vibes were way off.“At the Euros, we got some things a little bit wrong off the pitch,” Bellingham told the FA’s ‘Lions’ Den’ programme last week. “I don’t feel like the group connected as well as it could have, for a number of reasons.”This fact, widely accepted in private but rarely mentioned in public, has driven everything that Thomas Tuchel has done since he took over as England head coach. He has spoken to enough people to know how bad the situation was in Germany. And all of his work has been about rebuilding that sense of “brotherhood”, as he loves to call it, between the England players. Work that will be tested over the next few weeks, starting with their opening game against Croatia on Wednesday.At the heart of this matter is leadership. There is only so much that Tuchel, his assistant Anthony Barry and the rest of the coaching staff can do. For the “brotherhood” to take root, it has to be driven by the senior players. The England dressing room has to be a positive, powerful force in bringing people together. Which was not the case two years ago.The only other England player — before Bellingham last week — who had spoken about the vibe-crisis of Euro 2024 was Kane himself. During Tuchel’s first international camp in charge in March 2025, Kane admitted that during Gareth Southgate’s final tournament England were “a little bit light on leadership”. Southgate did not take Jordan Henderson or Harry Maguire — two of the building-blocks of his tenure — to Germany and it showed. Kane made clear enough he thought those decisions were mistakes.Thomas Tuchel has made a point of bringing back the unity among the England squad (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)Tuchel knows all of this. He started his tenure with a long series of fact-finding calls with England players and staff. He knows that England never looked right in Germany, even though they reached the final. And he is determined not to repeat the same mistakes. He knows that this campaign will stand or fall by the strength of its leadership and off-field connections.That in large part is why one of Tuchel’s first acts last March was to recall Henderson. He knows how important Henderson was behind the scenes. Kane said last year that he and Henderson “complement each other very well in the way we lead”. To generalise slightly, Kane has always been someone who leads by example, in part because he was so single-minded in his focus on his own game. Henderson, by contrast, is more naturally vocal, not just on the pitch but off it. The value for Tuchel is obvious. No one enforces standards like Henderson. If Henderson tells someone to do something, something they might not want to do (like a late-night ice bath), then they do it. No questions asked.This authority is especially relevant and especially valuable when it comes to Bellingham. There is nothing that Bellingham would not do if Henderson told him to. And so Henderson, who can get through to Bellingham like no one else, is therefore integral to getting the best from the Real Madrid midfielder. Which is something that Tuchel has been desperate to do ever since he took the England job.