Tuchel Three Lions Love and Connections and Care

A dispiriting watch. The 'mighty' Ingerlund stumble to a drab, uninspiring "playing with fire" one-nil World Cup qualifier win. Against Andorra. Yes, they're a footballing nation too.

Then three days later, the first ever loss to an African team. Inevitable one day perhaps, yet in this case, a listless abject 'frozen' surrender.

I've witnessed many post-'66 disasters. All those 'years of hurt'. A personal lowlight being in the ground for the goalless draw with Algeria in 2010.

The latest managerial uber-coach saviour continues the grapple with forging a team from promising talent that does not seem to gel.

Thomas Tuchel voiced his realisation of this shuddering after the game. From which we heard the amassed travelling support chanting their displeasure at the present embodiment of overall national decline.

“It’s on us, it’s on me to find the right connections - like who loves to play with each other, who has a genuine connection, who takes care of each other.”

I had to read that quote twice.

Love and Connections and Care.

A business-speak style expansion helps explains what this looks like, in reference to current setters of the bar. When compared to the level England must attain, he "raved about the Spanish players’ level of common purpose and understanding".

This focus aims to quell the famed putdown. Namely, 'team spirit is an illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory'.

It also runs counter to the flawed and misguided supremacy of goals over process.

[Hint: try swapping out the term 'spirit', start for instance, with 'culture'.]

I'm struggling to recall any 'team', including or solely featuring salespeople, I've seen assembled according to ideal make-up guidelines.

That includes the first framework encountered at B-school - Belbin - nor any of the unproven quasi-scientific personality trait woo-woo of recent snakeoil favour.

They tend to be thrown together on the basis of skillsets.

Who knows what.

Yet let's get back to that 'gel' aspect.

For all the merit in the typical team productivity lifecycle mapping, what both underpins and threads throughout their travails is crucial.

If your crack team does not share the connections noted above, you're likely making it much harder (impossible, even?) to gain anything worthwhile from them at all.

Miss the checking for this at your peril.