Piles of evidence show Thomas Tuchel may be over-straining

Still tricky, then, surely, to have firm opinions as yet about “style” and “identity” in relation to the Tuchel project. But does it tell us anything about where we currently are that Anusol, the manufacturers of “The UK’s No 1 Piles Treatment” have chosen this particular moment in the England story to explore a potential synergy? It was in Belgrade that the piles people chose to book a slot for their brand on the digital pitch-side hoarding display, thereby targeting very efficiently, you would have to say, at least two demographics, albeit possibly overlapping: football supporters with puerile senses of humour and people with a sports column to write.

Just to be clear, this was a static ad, and not one of those animated ones that routinely flicker distractingly around the perimeters of the game at the highest level. Remember that time Thiago, playing in red for Bayern Munich against RB Leipzig, spotted the run of Father Christmas, making a cartoon burst out wide with a snow shovel, and gave him the perfect pass to surge on to, only for an actual team-mate to scuttle back and stop the ball going out of play?

That should have been the end of those displays, really. Yet on they go, dramatically increasing your chances of seeing a world-class full-back outpaced by a waddling dachshund or, more embarrassingly, a Kia Picanto. However, if the makers of topical haemorrhoid applications are now getting involved, then this might be a very good moment to be thinking again about tighter legislation.

We’re aware, incidentally, of the recent reports showing increasing cases of piles in younger people, linked to dietary factors but also to mobile phones lengthening time on the lavatory – findings which have seen a Boston-based gastroenterologist soberingly urging scrollers to set a “two TikTok limit” during bathroom visits. Something else, then, to blame social media for. And another reason for the older ones among us to shake our saddened heads and say with a sigh: “That used to be newspapers causing those piles, you know.”

The public health context aside, though, would England have attracted adverts for haemorrhoid cream under Gareth Southgate? My view is, emphatically, no. On the contrary, when Southgate took over, pretty much everything around the English national side was showing the classic symptoms of over-straining. The players, the managers, the press, the fans, the levels of expectation nationally – after decades of frustrating exertion, all of these things were unhelpfully inflamed and out of proportion.

It was Southgate’s genius, by the determined and admirably un-squeamish application of his own anti-inflammatory remedies, to calm the swelling in the affected areas and bring relief. Result: following England was more comfortable than it had been at any point in the previous half-century – a monumental achievement for which Southgate was correctly knighted.

By employing Tuchel with the ­specific brief to win next year’s World Cup, the FA has itself chosen what is very much a topical solution – someone to superficially ease the chafing, rather than someone interested, as Southgate was, in addressing the longer-term behaviours and systemic issues that brought on that chafing in the first place. The piles guys seem to intuit this. It’s World Cup or bust under Tuchel, meaning the old itching is back. England are irritating all over again.

But let’s keep positive. It’s early days. And advertisers don’t always get it right. In any case, the time to worry is probably when we start seeing adverts popping up for kitty litter. Especially if they are animated and Declan Rice, looking to find Harry Kane ghosting in, merely picks out a cartoon cat covering its traces.

Photograph by Carl Reine/Getty Images