The Rijeka Press Conference: Tuchel's Selection Process and the Noise from the Manchester City Verdict

In Rijeka, in a press-conference room where every question was asked in two languages, Thomas Tuchel said something that made me press pause three times when I replayed the recording. He said he would never rule out a player simply because that player does not play in the top flight. He said everything would be looked at case by case. He said he would pick the best team for the camp, for the occasion, for the tournament.

It is a beautiful sentence, placed in the right spot, delivered with the right rhythm. In my line of work, beautiful sentences are usually worth dissecting more than controversial ones, because they tell you what someone wants you to believe. A person's actual behaviour tells you what they actually do. The gap between those two things is where I live, and it is where I want to take the reader in this piece.

The match ahead is England against Croatia in the Nations League, away from home, kicking off at 17:00 UK time on Saturday. In the same press conference, a second thread ran alongside it: the verdict concerning Manchester City, which Tuchel called "a big subject" and "everyone speaks about it."

Two subjects. One about the process of selection. One about the process of sanction. Through the eye of someone who writes about discipline and process, they are the same story.

Context: an unwritten convention and an undisclosed ruling

To understand why the lower-division remark matters, it needs to be placed inside the conventions of English football. For decades, England have selected almost exclusively players currently playing in the top flight. That is not a law written into any document. It is a habit repeated long enough to become an unwritten norm. And when an unwritten norm exists long enough, people start mistaking it for a rule. When someone says "I will never rule that out," they are touching a norm, not a law.

In practice, the current England squad contains 24 players, and all 24 play in top leagues for their clubs. The last player tied to the Championship to be capped by England was Sam Johnstone, then of West Brom, in 2026. Before that, in the same vein, there were similar cases in the goalkeeping position, and James Trafford is a name often mentioned. Kalvin Phillips is another case cited as an example of a route up from outside the group of leading clubs.

In other words, the door Tuchel says he never closes has in practice barely opened for years. A statement about policy and a data point about behaviour sit next to each other, and they do not match.

The second thread — the Manchester City verdict — surfaced at the press conference as a social event rather than a financial one. Tuchel said it was a big subject, that everyone speaks about it, and that no one needs his "half knowledge" on the topic. He said the players do talk about it, that the City players talk about it, but only briefly. And he said they are ready to go tomorrow.

It must be said clearly from the outset: the report provides no detail on the substance of the verdict, on the sanctions, or on the financial scale. That is unverified data and needs to be checked against the primary document. But the way the verdict surfaced — as noise inside a camp, not as a financial report — says a great deal about how governance news enters football.

Before the analysis, let us record the match context. The Nations League is UEFA's official competition, split into divisions with promotion and relegation. This is not a friendly. An away match in Rijeka is a real test, at an unfamiliar venue, against an opponent ranked among the top 20 nations in Europe. For Tuchel, this is the early phase of his tenure, meaning every decision he makes is under the microscope.

Core analysis: two second matches running in parallel

I have written before that the rules never stand outside the match; they are the second match running in parallel. The Rijeka press conference is a living example of that. There, two second matches were running at the same time. One was the match about selection criteria: who is allowed to wear the national shirt, on what basis, and who confirms that basis. The second was the match about financial compliance: how a club has been dealt with, through what process, and how far the consequences travel.

For the first of these second matches, let us begin by dissecting the sentence. "I will never rule that out" is a claim about scope. "Look at it case by case" is a claim about method. "Pick the best team for the camp, for the occasion, for the tournament" is a claim about criteria. Together, those three sentences form a doctrine: pick on form, not on club status.

This is an orthodox doctrine in modern international football. It is not new. Almost every manager says something similar in their first press conference, because it is both professionally correct and communicatively safe. The interesting part is not the doctrine. The interesting part is the gap between the doctrine and its execution.

I work in process analysis, and in that line of work there is an unbreakable principle: do not judge a system by what it declares, judge it by what it operates. A refereeing system says it applies the law consistently. But if, across 47 VAR decisions in a tournament, the intervention threshold shifts depending on the minute or the name of the team, then the system is operating differently from what it declares. The same logic applies here.

The figure of 24 out of 24 is not an accusation. It is a data point. And that data point says that throughout the tenure to date, the door Tuchel declares open has in practice never been walked through. The last person to walk through it — Sam Johnstone, in 2026 — did so before Tuchel arrived. This is a noteworthy data gap, not an indictment.

The interesting thing is that history shows the route from the lower divisions to the England team, where it existed, has almost always passed through the goalkeeping position. There is a structural reason for this, not an emotional one. A goalkeeper in the Championship can play 46 games in a season, accumulating an enormous volume of real match minutes, while a backup goalkeeper at a top club might play only a handful of cup games all season. In a position where match volume matters more than club status, the distance between the two routes narrows naturally.

For outfield positions, that distance is much wider. A midfielder or defender in the Championship must overcome not only direct rivals but also a prejudice about match intensity, about the quality of team-mates, about the tactical environment. Kalvin Phillips was once mentioned in this vein, and his story shows that the route is not non-existent, only rare. And the rare, in process analysis, must always be treated as an exception to be explained, not a rule to be expanded.

If I had to bet on who will be the first to test Tuchel's doctrine, I would bet on a goalkeeper or a young prospect. That is a structural inference, not a claim, and I record its confidence level as low. But it is an inference based on the structure of the system, not on intuition about people. And in my line of work, structural inference is always more reliable than intuitive inference.

Now to the second of the second matches. The verdict concerning Manchester City. Here I must be more careful, because I write about process, and writing about process demands a clear distinction between the known and the unknown.

The known: there is a verdict. The word "verdict" implies a ruling that is or is nearly complete, not a charge sheet. Within the Premier League system, financial-rule charges are adjudicated by an independent commission, and that commission's ruling can include fines, points deductions, or transfer restrictions. In recent years, the system has produced important precedents with Everton and Nottingham Forest, cases docked points for breaching profit-and-sustainability rules. The most widely known matter in this vein is the 115-charge case against Manchester City, a long and complex affair.

The unknown: the specific substance of the verdict, the sanctions, and the financial consequences. The report provides none of that. Tuchel also declined to comment, and I respect that refusal, because it is correct procedurally. A national-team manager has no authority over a club-level financial matter. To speak on it would be to overstep, and overstepping is the first error anyone operating a process must avoid.

But the notable thing is how the verdict surfaced. It did not surface as a financial report. It surfaced as a topic in the dressing room. "The players talk about it," Tuchel said. "The City players talk about it." That means that inside the England camp there are players with a direct personal interest tied to the verdict. Governance noise at club level has transmitted into the national-team level.

This is an example of what I call cross-layer transmission. A ruling at the top layer — the club-governance layer — flows down to the middle layer — the national-team camp — as a social topic, then flows further down to the lower layer — media and fans — as an angle to exploit. At each layer, the nature of the information changes. At the governance layer it is a legal document. At the camp layer it is a conversation. At the media layer it is a headline.

And this is where I want to pause. The referee is the only person on the pitch not allowed to be led by emotion. In this case, Tuchel is playing an analogous role at the management level: he must keep his camp from being swept up by a noise he cannot control. The four steps he takes are clear: acknowledge the subject's existence, refuse to speak on its substance, limit the duration of discussion, and redirect attention back to the match.

I have spent years rewatching match footage, studying how a referee manages a match at risk of slipping out of control. The basic principle is very close to what Tuchel is doing. When a tense situation erupts, the referee does not try to solve the root cause on the spot. He acknowledges the incident, separates those involved, limits the time spent arguing, and brings the match back to its rhythm. Solving the root cause, if needed, happens later, in the report.

That is exactly the structure in how Tuchel handled the Manchester City verdict. He acknowledged it as a big subject. He said no one needs his "half knowledge" — a way of detaching himself from the argument. He said the players talk about it "only briefly" — a way of limiting duration. And he said they are ready to go tomorrow — a way of redirecting attention. Four steps, in the right order, not one word wasted.

This matters for a specific reason. If England drop points against Croatia, a story is ready to be told. That story will be "the noise from the verdict affected the team's focus." Tuchel's proactive smothering of the noise before it became reality is a preventive act, not a reactive one. And in my line of work, prevention is always harder to assess than reaction, because you never know what was prevented. A good referee who prevents a brawl before it happens will never be credited in the report, because there is no line in the report that says "the brawl did not happen."

Based on my experience following matches, there is a striking recurring pattern here. The managers best at managing external noise are usually those with a grounding in process. They know exactly what falls within their authority and what does not. Tuchel, at this press conference, drew that line clearly: he has authority over the squad, he has no authority over the verdict. And he acted exactly according to that line.

There is another dimension to the story. The very fact that the verdict was discussed inside the England camp shows something about the composition of the squad: there are Manchester City players in the England setup. That makes the topic personally immediate, not merely a distant news item. For those players, the verdict is not an abstract subject. It is an event affecting the club where they earn their living, their team-mates, their future. That is why it surfaced in the dressing room, and that is why it needs to be managed rather than solved.

There is one more point I want to make, a methodological one. In process analysis, we tend to focus on large events and overlook small signals. But sometimes small signals have higher predictive value. Tuchel saying the players talk about the verdict "only briefly" is a small but important signal. It shows the camp is holding its focus, or at least is being managed to hold its focus. If he had said the players talk about it "constantly" or "cannot stop thinking about it," that would be an entirely different signal. A manager's choice of words at a press conference is a form of data, like a referee's direction of movement in a controversial passage of play.

Contrarian angle: one skill, two readings

The conventional reading would separate the two subjects and judge them independently. The selection thread is a story about football philosophy. The verdict thread is a story about club governance. One belongs to the pitch, one to the boardroom. But that reading misses the most interesting thing.

The most interesting thing is that both subjects are instances of the same phenomenon: the gap between what is declared and what is executed. In the first, what is declared is "the door is open," what is executed is "24 out of 24 players in top leagues." In the second, what is declared is "a verdict," what is executed is "a dressing-room topic about which no one provides detail."

And between those two gaps is a person, Tuchel, managing both at once. The skill he demonstrates at this press conference is not a tactical skill. It is the skill of managing a process under observation. That is more the skill of a referee than the skill of a manager in the traditional sense.

There is another, more counter-intuitive reading of the selection statement. Instead of reading it as a promise, read it as a tool. A statement that the door is open sends a signal to the entire player pool: that form, not club status, decides selection. That signal has motivational value even if it is never executed. A player performing well in the lower divisions will push harder if he believes the door might open. And a player in the top flight will push harder if he believes the door might close on him.

This does not mean the statement is a lie. It means the value of the statement lies not in its predictive accuracy but in its effect. In management, sometimes the most correct statement is the one that produces the correct behaviour, regardless of whether it is ever executed. That is an uncomfortable idea for those who want every word to match behaviour. But it is how many organisations operate, and recognising it helps us read press conferences more accurately instead of merely reacting to them.

The same logic applies to the verdict. The way it surfaced as a social topic rather than a legal document shows that in modern football, governance decisions enter public consciousness through the emotional channel before they pass through the rational one. People talk about the verdict before they understand the verdict. And that is why Tuchel's refusal to comment was the right decision: he refused to contribute to an emotional conversation with facts he does not have.

Progressive takeaway: what to track going forward

If I had to draw one thing from the Rijeka press conference, it is this: in modern football, a national-team manager increasingly has to work as a process manager, not merely as a selector. He must manage selection criteria, manage information, manage external noise, and manage expectations. The match on the pitch is only one part of the job.

What I want to track in the months ahead is not the result of England against Croatia. That result will come and go. What I want to track are two signals. First, whether any player from outside the top flight is actually called up in the coming camps, especially in the goalkeeping position. Second, whether the substance of the Manchester City verdict is fully disclosed, and if so, how it will bleed into national-team camps.

Those two signals will tell us whether the gap between what is declared and what is executed is narrowing or widening. And in my line of work, that gap is always the real story. Football has no VAR, only hidden angles waiting to be revealed. And the most notable hidden angle in Rijeka lies not in Tuchel's answers. It lies in what he chose not to answer.