Owen tells Tuchel to bench ‘best three’ forwards in radical plan for England at World Cup | OneFootball

Michael Owen has advised England manager Thomas Tuchel to bench his “best three players behind Harry Kane” in a radical tactical call to win the World Cup.

The Three Lions won their final group warm-up game 3-0 against Costa Rica on Wednesday ahead of their opening Group L game against Croatia next week with Anthony Gordon, Jude Bellingham and Noni Madueke starting in the forward positions behind Kane as the central striker.

Madueke was deputising for Bukayo Saka as Tuchel looks to nurse him through an achilles injury, but the performances of Gordon and Bellingham were promising as they battle Marcus Rashford and Morgan Rogers respectively for a place in the starting XI.

Much has been made of those selection calls in the media, but Owen a) doesn’t really “care who starts there”, and b) would actually keep the “best players” in reserve to make an impact from the bench in the exhausting conditions.

He told World Cup odds (via Metro): “If I were Thomas Tuchel, I would be literally changing the hell out of those positions constantly and I don’t care if somebody scores a hat-trick in the first game; they still get substituted at half-time and you put on the next three.

“We’re so strong in those positions and what’s going to win this tournament is freshness, and what’s going to kill us is the heat, tiredness, fatigue so I don’t care who starts there.

“In fact I would go the other way round and if Thomas Tuchel has got his idea on who are the best three players to play in behind Harry Kane then I would put them all on the bench and bring them on in the second half because that’s even more important in the first half if you do what I think we should do and just change the hell out of them all the time.

“I’d be giving them no more than 45 minutes every game because if you’re going to play six players in those positions across the game then I prefer the best ones to be playing at the end when the opponents are fatigued.”

Favourites and dark horses

Owen picked out France as his favourites to win the World Cup and Germany as his “dark horses”

“I think France individually are the best team,” Owen added. “When you look at their players, they’re miles better than anybody else in terms of individuals.

“If they play as a team and they’re the best team and probably the likeliest winners.

“I think England will be a quarter-final or a semi-final at best would be my guess, but I have a sneaky feeling that Germany could do well.

“I think they could do well. So France would be my pick, England to get to the quarters or semis and Germany to be the dark horses.”