Thomas Tuchel has a signed a deal to become the next manager of the England men’s football team.
The German is expected to be officially unveiled on Wednesday following Gareth Southgate’s resignation after Euro 2024, with Lee Carsley having taken temporary charge since then.
Tuchel is perhaps best known in the UK for being the former Chelsea manager. But his stint in west London was just one small part of his story.
Growing up in Germany
The 51-year-old is only the third foreign manager in the history of the England men’s football team – and the first German to take charge.
He follows in the footsteps of the late Sven-Goran Eriksson, the Swede who managed England from 2001 to 2006, and Italy’s Fabio Capello who led the Three Lions from 2007 to 2012.
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Harry Kane: ‘I know Thomas well’
Tuchel grew up in the small town of Krumbach, Bavaria, in 1970s West Germany and showed a talent for football from a young age.
Despite originally wanting to be a helicopter pilot, the young defender’s skill marked him out as the best player in his school – which he helped to win the German Schools Championship in Berlin in 1987.
Injury ends playing career in his 20s
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Within a year, the teenager was snapped up by FC Augsburg at the Bundesliga side’s youth academy.
However, despite his promising start, he was released from the club aged 19 without ever making a first-team appearance.
Tuchel was then signed by Stuttgarter Kickers, then in the Bundesliga 2. He managed only eight appearances before moving down to SSV Ulm in Germany’s third-tier.
His career there was given a boost when a young man called Ralf Rangnick – who would later go on to temporarily manage Manchester United – was appointed the club’s manager.
Tuchel made a total of 68 appearances for the side, based in southwest Germany, and contributed to their promotion to Bundesliga 2.
However, his dreams were dealt another blow when a chronic knee injury forced him into an early retirement from playing in his mid-20s in 1998.
University studies
After leaving the field of play, Tuchel did not jump straight into management. Instead, he decided to go to university, where he studied business administration, while also working as a waiter in a bar to help pay the bills.
But his love of football never left him – and his friendship with Rangnick, which continued after he left SSV Ulm, helped pull him back.
By this point, Rangnick was the manager of Stuttgart and Tuchel seemed to have recovered from his injury.
He managed to persuade his former boss to give him a trial for the team’s reserves.
But, frustratingly, his hopes were dashed again, as his old injury came back to haunt him and it became apparent that his chronic cartilage damage could not be overcome.
Early coaching career
Rangnick took pity on his friend and talked him into trying out coaching instead. Before long, Tuchel was working in the club’s academy and eventually took over Stuttgart’s under-14s team in 2000.
His aptitude for the role quickly became clear, and he was promoted to head the under-19s team, which he led to win the league’s youth league in 2005.
Following a rapid rise at the helm of several youth teams, and less than a decade since he was working in a bar, Tuchel was appointed first team coach of Bundesliga side Mainz in August 2009.
Replacing Klopp
After taking over from future Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp at Mainz, he helped the newly promoted side finish an impressive ninth in Germany’s top tier.
He then steered the side to a fifth-place finish – and a Europa League spot – in the 2011/12 season.
From then on, the only way was up.
In 2015, he was appointed in the top job at Borussia Dortmund, again taking over from Klopp.
Tuchel led the side to a second-place Bundesliga finish, just behind Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich.
In 2018, he left to join top French side Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), helping them win the Ligue 1 title in his first season.
The following year, he won the domestic treble with PSG and took the club to its first Champions League final in 2020, where the team narrowly lost 1-0 to Bayern Munich.
Tuchel’s success attracted plenty of suitors and he eventually left PSG on Christmas Eve 2020 – before it was announced he would be replacing Frank Lampard in the top job at Chelsea in January 2021.
Within months, he took the team to the Champions League final against Manchester City, which Chelsea won 1-0.
Five people, including two children, have been killed in a crash on the M6.
The two-car collision involved a Toyota and a Skoda and happened on the northbound motorway, past Tebay services in Cumbria, at 4.04pm on Tuesday, police said.
Four people – a man, a woman and two children from Glasgow – who were travelling in the Toyota were pronounced dead at the scene.
The Skoda driver, a man from Cambridgeshire, also died in the crash.
Cumbria Constabulary said a third child in the Toyota was taken to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle with serious injuries.
Three and a half years ago, Tim Daly was given just a few months to live. Born with learning disabilities, he later developed cancer, which kept returning.
Despite being very sick, Tim can still live at home with his mum Valerie, because of support from his palliative care nurse Phoebe Mooney.
“It’s really sad to see him deteriorate,” Phoebe says during a visit to Tim.
“When I first started seeing him he was independently mobile in his wheelchair. He would take lots of videos. He’d be super, super chatty.”
It is clear Tim and Phoebe share a special bond, but working in such an emotionally demanding role can be challenging.
“I’m not going to lie, I do cry quite a lot at work,” Phoebe says. “Particularly when things don’t go so well, which they don’t at times.”
Tim’s mother Valerie Daly is 82 and says she wouldn’t be able to keep Tim at home without the support she gets from St Christopher’s Hospice in Sydenham, southeast London, where Phoebe works.
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“I couldn’t do this without them,” she says. “It’s just knowing that there’s somebody there. Somebody who cares. Somebody who knows Tim.”
The support Valerie and Tim get is far from guaranteed across the UK.
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As MPs consider legalising assisted dying, with a bill being introduced to parliament today, the quality of the country’s end-of-life care is being questioned.
“It’s really important we’re talking about funding for hospices at the same time,” says Jan Noble, the director of quality and innovation at St Christopher’s.
“Because people need to know that they’re going to get the right symptom control and support if they are approaching the end of life. And actually it’s not all about assisted dying.
“People are fearful because at the moment hospices throughout the country haven’t got the adequate funding, which means care can be a postcode lottery.”
St Christopher’s Hospice neither supports nor opposes a change in the law, but the hospice sector is a strong voice in the debate.
Hospices rely on charity to survive, with the government providing only around a third of their funding.
The sector has concerns about whether the health system could cope with the additional pressure that assisted dying would bring.
“While it’s not for us to take a view either way, what we would say is that this is a very fundamental change to consider introducing into a system which is already under really significant stress,” says Charlie King, deputy director of external affairs at Hospice UK.
“We’ve got hospices who are cutting back their services already, making frontline staff redundant, because they’re no longer able to fund those services.
“Whether or not assisted dying is introduced by this government, we must fix the end-of-life care system in the UK,” he said.
“This government has inherited huge challenges in the hospice sector, as well as a £22bn black hole in the public finances, so these problems will take time to fix,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said.
“Whilst the majority of palliative and end-of-life care is provided by the NHS, we recognise the vital role voluntary organisations including hospices play in providing support to people at end of life and their families.
“We are determined to shift more healthcare out of hospitals and into the community, to ensure patients and their families receive personalised care in the most appropriate setting, and hospices will have a big role to play in that shift.”
Lynda Browne, 59, has experienced the best and worst of end-of-life care.
Her mother died peacefully and comfortably at a Marie Curie Hospice, but her aunt Mary chose to die at home and Lynda was devastated by the lack of care she received.
“We had to buy her incontinence pads, we had to buy different creams because the deliveries weren’t regular or there was nothing available or you couldn’t get through,” she says.
“We had to chase everyone for everything and it’s just so tiring all the time having to fight.”
It’s a problem palliative care doctors say needs to be urgently addressed.
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NHS staff working in England will be able to anonymously report their colleagues for sexual harassment from today, as health bosses warned inappropriate behaviour “will not be tolerated”.
The health service also plans to bring in more pastoral support, and even special leave, for people who have suffered sexual misconduct at work.
It comes after a Sky News investigation heard harassment and assault is “rife” in the ambulance service.
Many dozens of paramedics have now spoken up about a culture in which being groped or being the victim of inappropriate comments and jokes is commonplace.
Some women even claimed to have been threatened with rape, or pressured into sexual acts to keep their jobs, while one female paramedic tried to take her own life after being locked in the back of an ambulance and sexually assaulted by a colleague.
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Female paramedics ‘sexually hounded’
Whistleblowers also claimed when they raised concerns they were punished or ostracised.
But NHS England has warned that sexual misconduct is “a problem right across the health service”, and other workforces have come under scrutiny.
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In a survey last September almost a third of female surgeons who responded said they had been sexually assaulted by a colleague, and two thirds claimed to have been the target of sexual harassment.
NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard called this behaviour “unacceptable” and said that from today an online reporting tool will allow staff to report abuse anonymously. The reports will then be assessed by HR teams and investigated.
The NHS also plans to bring in pastoral support for people who have experienced sexual abuse, with special leave available if needed. Staff are also being urged to complete new training on what to do if they see or are told about sexual misconduct.
Amanda Pritchard added: “We must do everything in our power to ensure our staff feel able to speak up, and have absolute confidence that they will be given the support they need when they do.
“There is absolutely no place for sexual misconduct or abuse of any kind within the NHS – a place where staff come to work every day to provide compassionate care and support to others, and we know that women are more likely to be affected – this is unacceptable, and we must not tolerate it.”
The NHS said the new policy covers all sexual misconduct at work – whether in an NHS setting, a virtual environment or elsewhere.
It can include many things from sexual assault or rape to sexual comments or jokes, showing sexual pictures and staring at someone in a sexual way.
In this year’s NHS Staff Survey, almost 26,000 staff said they’d been the victim of assault, touching, sexualised or inappropriate conversation or jokes from their colleagues.
Dr Chelcie Jerwick is the co-founder of Surviving in Scrubs, a campaign group that highlights sexual harassment in the NHS. She believes many more cases go unreported but that the anonymous system is a great way to give people options to come forward.
“I think that there is definitely a culture of tolerance of these behaviours and attitudes within the NHS.
“I know from my own personal experience of trying to raise complaints that it can be really difficult, not only in order to kind of speak up, but also the logistics of how you raise a complaint. Is that to your consultant, your line manager? Do you go directly to HR?
“It’s really hard to navigate and it can be really scary. So, it’s really great to see NHS England providing this anonymous way of reporting now.”