It was more than two years ago when the Football Association started thinking about life beyond Gareth Southgate. It wanted to aim for the stars, knowing that its window of opportunity to win a tournament with this group of players — not least Harry Kane — was finite. It had to find someone who could win the World Cup.So it drew up a list of characteristics which it believed would correlate with tournament success. One of which, along with playing style and tactical flexibility, was the coach’s record in club knockout football.And on this metric Thomas Tuchel — who was then at Bayern — scored spectacularly well. His ability to guide a team through cup competitions, one game at a time, was second to none. It became a key part of the argument to target him. Especially given that Pep Guardiola, the FA’s dream candidate, wanted to stay at Manchester City, doing two more seasons there.When Southgate resigned after Euro 2024, it was time to put the plan into action. FA technical director John McDermott reached out to Tuchel, who had just left Bayern Munich, and who had held talks — which came to nothing — for the Manchester United job. There was a meeting with McDermott in Munich, one with Anthony Barry, and then another with McDermott and FA CEO Mark Bullingham. Tuchel wowed the FA delegation with a presentation about how he thought he could win the forthcoming World Cup.And now here we all are, in June 2026, with England due to fly today from their base in Kansas City to Atlanta for their World Cup last 32 game with DR Congo tomorrow. It is no exaggeration to say that everything that has happened over the last few years was building up specifically to this. Or to this, and then the four potential games after that, all squeezed into the next three weeks.This is precisely what Tuchel was appointed for. That reputation as a cup football maestro, that glow of knockout know-how, is integral to Tuchel’s mystique as a coach. He is among the elite coaches in the modern game, and yet he is one of those managers — perhaps like Carlo Ancelotti — whose standing owes more to knockout football than to leagues. Yes, he won Ligue 1 twice with PSG and the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich. But they are not where his aura derives from.Why Jude Bellingham Is Still Being UnderratedWhat made Tuchel into this dominant figure — one ultimately entrusted by the FA to help them to add that second star — was his record in cups. And not just the domestic cups he won with Borussia Dortmund and PSG, but the Champions League, the competition that still ultimately defines the best coaches.Until England called, that was Tuchel’s biggest ambition in football. In 2019-20, Tuchel took PSG all the way to their first-ever Champions League final, past Dortmund, past Atalanta, past RB Leipzig, only for them to lose 1-0 to Bayern in a tight, behind-closed-doors final in Lisbon. He was sacked four months later.