Syndicated reporting provided by Stats Perform and reviewed by the SoccerNews editorial team.
Thomas Tuchel felt England’s players harnessed the pain of their World Cup failure in a positive way against Croatia, after they trounced their old rivals 7-0 in the Nations League.
Less than four months on from the Three Lions’ semi-final collapse against Argentina, when Tuchel was fiercely criticised for reining in his attacking players, his team showed a completely different side in Rijeka.
Harry Kane, Anthony Gordon, Jude Bellingham and Bukayo Saka all scored in the first half to put the result beyond all reasonable doubt, with Kane and Saka both clinching their braces and Morgan Rogers adding the final goal off the bench in the second period.
It was the heaviest defeat in Croatia’s history and England’s biggest-ever Nations League win, as well as their biggest victory over any top 50 team in the FIFA World Rankings.
The Three Lions had four different players score in the first half of a game for the first time since March 2013 against San Marino (Frank Lampard, Jermain Defoe, Ashley Young, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain), while their nine-match winning streak away from home is their joint-longest ever, having managed an identical run between December 1965 and October 1967 either side of their World Cup triumph.
And while Tuchel admits the pain of July’s defeat to Argentina still weighs heavily on everyone connected to the England team, he was pleased to see them take out their anger on a top-tier opponent.
“This is the only way to move forward, even if you still feel pain,” Tuchel said.
“You have to play with the pain if you still feel the disappointment, you have to play with it. That is the nature of sport.
“It was not an easy camp in the beginning, after this long tournament, for multiple reasons. But straight away, from the first training session… we had an excellent performance against Spain but not the result, then the reaction to that result in Czechia, and now the build-up here.
“The focus in the meetings, the translation of the meetings onto the pitch and to bring it in these circumstances in Croatia, to win with this dominant performance, that is the way to move on.”
Sharing a special moment with the 100 England fans in the stadium
Thank you so much for joining us in Croatia and continuing to support our #ThreeLions around the world pic.twitter.com/R3EbdevLtm
— England (@England) October 3, 2026
Although all of England’s attackers impressed, Bellingham was the real star of the show, as he capped a 27-pass move for his goal and also added three assists.
The Real Madrid superstar – who recently won England’s Player of the Year award for 2026 after scoring seven goals at the World Cup – teed up Kane and Saka in the first half, then supplied the defence-splitting pass for Rogers to add the seventh goal.
When asked if Bellingham had gone up a level in 2026, Tuchel said: “At the moment it seems like it, and you always need to. You can never stand still.
“It’s like on these electric escalators, if you stand still, if you walk against the escalator, you have to walk to even maintain your level.
“You have to develop and you have to push for the next level, otherwise other teams will catch up.”
England have six points on the board after three Nations League games, putting them three behind Group A3 leaders Spain and three above third-placed Croatia, ahead of Tuesday’s clash with Czechia at Wembley.
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