Thomas Tuchel delivers honest Cole Palmer verdict after England’s loss to Japan | OneFootball

Thomas Tuchel has delivered his assessment on the performance of Cole Palmer in England’s last friendly before the World Cup.

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After impressing from the bench against Uruguay, Palmer was handed a start, but England slipped to a 1-0 defeat against Japan at Wembley.

Palmer gave the ball away which led to Brighton’s Karou Mitoma scoring the only goal of the game, to cap off a poor international break for The Three Lions.

Thomas Tuchel delivers Cole Palmer verdict

The English media were unimpressed by Palmer, and he certainly did himself no favours in trying to secure the number ten role at the World Cup.

Lee Dixon was also critical of Palmer’s performance, on a difficult night for England’s attackers in general as they struggled to break down Japan.

Palmer is in competition with the likes of Morgan Rogers, Phil Foden and Jude Bellingham for the number ten role, and Tuchel shared his thoughts on the Chelsea star.

“I’m not the biggest friend now to talk about individual, but of course if we if we put offensive players with a uh on the pitch, we demand offensive actions, we demand yeah uh creativity, we demand dribblings, we demand shots, we demand assists, and we we clearly didn’t have enough, could not create,” he told his post-match press conference.

“We made it difficult for us to find them in the half spaces. We we struggled to open up these spaces. We played against the deep 5-4-1.

“Um, we didn’t use the width of the field enough to make the difference. And our offensive players struggled to make the difference and to create something against the one-on-one situations because against the deep 5-4-1, you get basically no superiority through passing.”

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