Thomas Tuchel brings The Surge to make England genuine World Cup threat

I t didn’t take long for one wag in the travelling England caravan to come up with a deeply inappropriate nickname for that jazzed-up high-energy start to the second-half performance in Dallas last Wednesday. That name was: Packetball. The word packet is, the Urban Dictionary confirms, slang for a small sachet of the same illegal and wholly inadvisable stimulant that was discovered in more than half of the Wembley Stadium toilets by a newspaper investigation after a home qualifier during the Southgate era. Who knows, maybe England have found a way to connect on a more profound level with certain elements of the fanbase. There was often a sense of textural disconnect between the carefully metered football of that successful England team, and the more adrenal demands of parts of the support crowd for a faster, quicker, more Packetball-coded style. Or in other words, for something like The Surge after half-time in Dallas when England produced perhaps the most visceral spell of sustained attacking power at this World Cup so far; all of it driven on by the wild-eyed figure on the touchline, out there whirling his arms like a triple Michelin-starred chef furiously shredding a barrel of kumquats while the service bells ping and the evening shift kicks into high gear. England arrived in Boston on Monday for their second group game against Ghana, a 4pm local (9pm in England) kick-off at Boston Stadium the following day. There is some minor metal fatigue in the camp. …