I Substituted Rice To Play Offensive Football Against Norway – Tuchel

England manager Thomas Tuchel has opened up on his decision to substitute Declan Rice at half-time during his team’s dramatic 2-1 World Cup quarter-final victory over Norway. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

Stressing that he had already planned the substitution when England were trailing 1-0, Tuchel revealed that he had to introduce Saka and Eze to inject more attacking impetus despite snatching an equaliser right before the interval.

Thomas added that Rice was never going to be fit enough to play 90 minutes anyway after missing two successive training sessions.

His words, “We made life for ourself complicated, we had some players struggling with the heat.

Ezri Konsa was one of them, cramps in his hamstring and with Declan, we made the decision to go more offensive at half-time.

It was a bit of an offensive shift. I made the decision at 1-0 down and didn’t want to go back on the decision.

Even after the equaliser I thought this was the right signal to the team, to take up higher positions and more connections when Norway defends in a deep block.

It’s about being closer to your opponents box, so we put in Ebs and Bukayo and that meant we had to take Dec or Elliot [Anderson] out.

Knowing that Declan struggles after the last three days, he was most of the time in bed, I knew he could not survive the 90 minutes.

I also knew there was the possibility of 120 so I didn’t want to waste another change so I made the decision to take Declan out to avoid another change further on.

They have to, no doubt about it. Our level of training will now go down. The next few days are crucial. We have another. This victory will help a lot. We have a top facility to recover at the highest level.”