Thomas Tuchel has explained why Declan Rice was substituted during England’s World Cup quarter-final win over Norway on Saturday night.
Arsenal’s Declan Rice managed to make the starting lineup for England’s game against Norway on Saturday, but he was withdrawn at half-time as part of a double change.
When asked whether the decision was tactical or enforced by Rice’s recent illness, Thomas Tuchel suggested it was a bit of both.
The primary aim was to bring on a more offensive player for the second half, but the reason Rice was selected to make way over Elliot Anderson was that he’d been struggling with illness during the week.
“Declan, we made a decision in half-time to become more offensive, to have a bit of an offensive shift,” Tuchel explained.
“We had to take Elliott [Anderson] or Declan out [and] knowing that Declan struggled after the last three days where he was most of the time in bed, I knew he cannot survive 90 minutes.
“There was a possibility that it goes 120 [minutes], so I didn’t want to waste another change, so the decision was to take Declan out earlier than he needed to go out, just to save us another change later down the match.”
The explanation makes sense, though it’s obviously not ideal that England needed to use Rice at all, in a week of illness struggles. Having the game off completely would have been preferable.
England have just a few days to rest now, with the World Cup semi-final against Argentina on Wednesday. Win or lose, the team will have another match at the weekend.
After that, Rice and co. can finally begin their summer holidays, a matter of days before some of their club teammates return for pre-season.
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