Thomas Tuchel ‘concerned’ about Florida pitch | OneFootball

England manager Thomas Tuchel says he is “concerned” about pictures he has seen of the pitch at the Raymond James Stadium in Florida where England will play New Zealand.

England play New Zealand in the first of two friendlies before the World Cup begins, but the German manager was not happy with images he saw of the pitch, which did not look in great condition.

“No, it will not affect my team selection because what I heard until now is that it should be okay and we want it of course to be okay. I saw just a photo from your colleague that made me a little bit worried and concerned. 

“But let’s decide when we are there. If there are any issues, we can always react to it. The plan is tomorrow to play two sets of 45 minutes with two complete teams to expose everyone to the same amount of minutes.

“I think tomorrow is maybe the focus more on the minutes. So we will share the minutes that we can continue in the training process together and we don’t have to split the group up and take care of the guys who played a bit less and take care of the guys who played a little bit more.

“We just will give everyone the minutes and everyone a go finally here at the World Cup. But at the same time it’s also like to reconnect to our identity and the stuff that we did good. So we had a lot of meetings offensively and defensively and we want to see how far we can push this already.”

England play Croatia in their World Cup opener on June 17, but Tuchel said he isn’t even thinking about them.

“I think against Croatia it will be a very different game and we have still four training days in Kansas to prepare for Croatia. So Croatia at the moment does not exist in the talk to the players or it’s not a theme in the training sessions.”