LONDON — Thomas Tuchel has insisted Manchester City’s potential punishment for breaching Premier League financial rules was not a distraction for his England players in Saturday’s 3-2 Nations League defeat to Spain.
A source told ESPN on Friday that City are expected to be found guilty in the vast majority of the 115 charges relating to alleged misconduct between 2009 and 2018.
City trio Marc Guéhi, Nico O’Reilly and Elliot Anderson all started at Wembley barely 24 hours after news of the likely guilty verdict broke.
City continue to deny all charges and the Premier League declined to comment when contacted by ESPN.
England captain Harry Kane said there had been a “discussion” within the group about City’s situation while both Guéhi and O’Reilly made individual mistakes, as Spain came from 2-1 down to win through substitute Mikel Oyarzabal’s 74th-minute strike.
Asked whether the City situation could be an issue during the international break, Tuchel said: “Not for me but I can imagine maybe for the Manchester City players but for me not and I will not comment on that because it is an ongoing court case so I will not give any comment.
“I didn’t make it a topic. It was not a topic for me. I hear the news as the latest person in camp. I was just thinking about Spain and training and meetings and media meetings and individual meetings. Not for me. For the players, they have more time than me, they have one training session. I can imagine they talk about it. It is good they do. I didn’t feel they were distracted.”
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Speaking to ITV, Kane said: “There was a discussion, but at the end of the day when we’re with England, that’s been a big plus for us, we kind of put club football to one side and it was no different this week.”
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England fell behind after just two minutes as Guehi gifted Lamine Yamal the chance to open the scoring. Anthony Gordon equalised before Kane’s deflected header put the Three Lions 2-1 in front at the break.
Kane missed a penalty to put England 3-1 up on 54 minutes before world champions Spain responded as Álex Baena and Oyarzabal both came off the bench to score in a thrilling League A Group 3 opener.
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“I think in this moment it [Kane’s penalty] would have been the decisive punch to get this full momentum and full belief into our match with a two-goal advantage,” Tuchel said.
“Couldn’t do it, made unfortunately another technical mistake that cost us, and then the momentum shifted again. We conceded one goal from open play that we should absolutely defend better because they play through the middle.
“The result is not what we wanted. I think we could have won it, so we have to live with it, recover from it, learn from it, do what we did good on the same level, and reduce and improve our own mistakes.”
