Tuchel's 99.9% line ignores real questions

Tuchel called up his group for the upcoming Nations League fixtures with barely a month gone since England's tournament ended against Argentina. The squad itself hints at a desire for greater tactical options rather than a straight repeat of the World Cup XI. What's changed is the mood around him.

The 99.9% problem

Tuchel has leaned on that figure in press conferences to describe supporter sentiment, framing dissent as a rounding error. Steinberg's column argues that the 0.1% he's brushing off happens to include some of the sharpest tactical questions from the World Cup, specifically around his substitution timing against Argentina. Numbers invented for effect in a press room don't settle an argument about game management, they just close it down.

What actually got questioned

The criticism Steinberg revives isn't noise about formations or friendly results. It's about the specific decisions Tuchel made from the bench when England needed a route back into the Argentina game, and whether his changes came too late to shift it. That's the kind of scrutiny every England manager gets after a tournament exit, and dismissing it wholesale as a fringe complaint doesn't make it go away.

Squad selection as a statement

By widening his options for the Nations League rather than sticking rigidly to the group that started the quarter-final, Tuchel is signalling he's open to solutions he didn't have against Argentina. That still invites scrutiny of the exact moments Steinberg is pointing at, because a squad built for more choices only matters if the choices get made earlier next time.

The Nations League fixtures won't settle whether Tuchel's substitution calls in Argentina were the right ones. But they will be the first live test of whether he's actually adjusted anything, or just changed how he talks about the criticism.