It really all started in a dark Serbian car park.
Nine months into the job, Thomas Tuchel had just passed his first real test as England coach with flying colours, thrashing a potentially dangerous Serbian side 5-0 in a cauldron-like Belgrade.
In the aftermath of that success, which effectively booked England a World Cup spot, a group of unused substitutes chose to conduct an intense warm-down, in darkness, after celebrations had died down.
Unbeknownst to those squad players doing “box-to-box” runs next to the stadium, they were being watched by a coach already starting to formulate a winning ethos.
“It was remarkable because they have this huge tunnel going up from the ground, uphill to the dressing room, almost no light at all and the quality of the pitches was not there,” Tuchel told a small group of reporters last month.
