Thomas Tuchel can justify two major snubs - but there is no excuse for one huge England omission

Give him his due, Thomas Tuchel is clearly loving the lucrative gap year he is spending as England manager. As his employment with the Football Association began in January and will run until the end of next summer’s World Cup, it is more than a year but you get the drift.

Tuchel is doing something different in between club jobs. The role he occupies was once commonly referred to as one of the most pressurised in football management but Tuchel looks like a guy under zero pressure.

And in many ways, that is exactly the case. England will qualify for the finals in a canter and will probably give a decent account of themselves at the tournament without going all the way and winning it.

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And anyway, whatever happens, Tuchel’s reputation and, most significantly, his suitability for elite club posts will not be tarnished. Quite simply, Tuchel has little to lose.

Which is probably one of the reasons he feels empowered to make the sort of unlikely squad selection that was announced on Friday. In explaining that selection, he essentially said there was a great atmosphere at the previous camp so he picked the same lads.

Further explanation might include the fact that the 5-0 win in Belgrade was the best result and performance of Tuchel’s short reign. And that is true, although let’s not pretend the current Serbian team is any great shakes.

They have won four of their last 10 matches, their victims being Andorra, Latvia, Austria and Switzerland. They are decent - but no powerhouses.

And Tuchel’s main task is not to maintain some sort of feelgood factor around the place … it is to produce a team and squad capable of winning the World Cup. And if they are both fit, the idea that the squad cannot include Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden is nothing short of preposterous.

There is a lot of talk about Bellingham’s attitude and, listen, he is a very confident boy. But he has reason to be.

He is a game-changer, he is a highly accomplished player, he kept England at the Euros when it looked as though Slovakia were about to knock out Gareth Southgate’s men. Foden possesses a sublime talent that is again beginning to shine for Manchester City.

They should both be in the England squad that will face Wales in a friendly at Wembley on Thursday and Latvia in a World Cup qualifier in Riga on Tuesday week. But there are valid excuses for their omission, even if Tuchel did not feel the need to make any.

Foden is only just returning to his best form and Bellingham is finding his way back to full fitness after a shoulder operation delayed his start to the club season. And there are definitely excuses for continuing to ignore any claims from Jack Grealish, who has made a decent start to his loan spell at Everton but who is deemed surplus to requirements at a club that finished third in the Premier League last season.

But there are no excuses for the omission of Adam Wharton. The Crystal Palace player has had his own injury issues and withdrew from Tuchel’s previous squad but since then, he was good in shortened Premier League outings against West Ham United and Liverpool and was excellent in the Europa Conference League win over Dynamo Kyiv on Thursday night.

He has shown a level of club consistency that has been higher than the levels shown by the likes of Morgan Gibbs-White, Morgan Rogers, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Jordan Henderson, good players that they are. In his press conference explaining his decisions, Tuchel said: “Adam Wharton deserves to be with us.”

So, why isn’t he then? And why isn’t Bellingham there? Here’s why.

Because Tuchel wants to keep the lads who got a good win against a nation ranked 34th in the world together. Which is nice. But it is unlikely to help you win a World Cup.