This international break may be the most untimely given players have been on their holidays since the end of the league season and those not involved in the Fifa Club World Cup will return to their sun loungers next week. But it could prove to be the most important for England.
Forget the actual football for a second — a World Cup qualifier against Andorra on Saturday, which is being played across the border in Spain, at Espanyol’s RCDE Stadium in Barcelona, and next Tuesday’s friendly game with Senegal at the City Ground in Nottingham — and instead it could be the action off the pitch from which Thomas Tuchel will take most.
Preparations for next summer’s World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico will take many forms but the few days that the England head coach has spent in Catalunya with his players could prove valuable.
Tuchel has had his charges cycling in sauna-like conditions, training in tents and testing their core body temperatures by taking a biometric pill. It is all with a view of how they will cope with the intense heat and humid conditions that next summer will bring.
“We just tried to figure out how the players individually react to heat because it will be a very hot and humid World Cup,” Tuchel told BBC Radio 5 Live. “We did this so that we can provide individual cooling systems and individual electrolyte drinks and so on.”
Such measures will be needed when England, as expected, make it to the latter stages of the World Cup that Tuchel has been tasked with winning. The temperatures, particularly in Dallas and Monterey, are expected to be ferocious.
Replicating such a harsh environment is hardly what players who have just endured another taxing 10-month season will have longed for at this juncture — and again the ever-increasing demands that the schedule places upon players come into question — but this is the only realistic time Tuchel and his coaches will have to prepare in such a manner.
The next three international breaks in September, October and November will see the qualifiers ramp up with games away in Serbia and Albania and time will be at an even more of a premium, therefore taking this week to spend time in some summer sunshine mixing leisure with training could prove the wisest of moves.
This camp, which has seen the team stay at the Camiral Golf & Wellness resort on the outskirts of Girona, has allowed plenty of chances for the players to foster a team spirit.
Away from the warm-weather training, there have been plenty of meals outside and other opportunities to play golf, go swimming and simply take in the scenery by wandering around the grounds.
Team bonding has been high on agenda
Perhaps most notable was that Tuchel and Harry Kane, his captain, decided for the squad to jet out of Birmingham airport last Sunday morning to experience the Barcelona grand prix. The players may have been a little dazed by the early alarm call but it was another bonding session undertaken for a reason.
The style of this camp and what it’s trying to achieve means that any player included in it will stand a good chance of making the final squad should form and fitness hold up. Tuchel has clearly picked the members of this squad with that in mind. A lot has been invested in these few days away.
The expectations, though, are that England will have sweated more on the training pitch than in the two games they are to play. Andorra are ranked 173rd in the world and a heavily rotated England XI will then face Senegal in the friendly.
“It will be on us to get going,” Tuchel said. “I think it is on us to keep the tempo high, it is on us to bring the energy to the pitch. It is on us to bring the attacking energy to the pitch and to do this in a relentless way.
“I can fully understand that this is not the easiest time of the season for an international break. The players come from a short break of holiday, from a long and tiring season and then accepting again the role.
“We want a win. We want a clear and solid win that is never in danger. This is what we expect from us tomorrow.
“It is important not to over expect from us in terms of already a clear result, biggest chances, goals already after 10-20 minutes, and get impatient and get frustrated with ourselves. I think it’s a test to our patience. Andorra played against Spain and it was 1-0 at half-time with a set-piece.
“It’s a World Cup qualifier. Respect your opponent, you respect the quality, the defensive organisation of your opponent and you understand how difficult it is to break down.”
It could be, though, that England have already made the most of an international break that few really wanted.
