Oh Thomas Tuchel, how I love you! Unlike the last boss of the England team, Saint Gareth of Southgate, there’s no smart suit and fashionable theories about sad young men for you. You won’t write a book called ‘Anything Is Possible: Be Brave, Be Kind & Follow Your Dreams’. No one will ever write a play about you, though you are beautifully portrayed in the current series of Radio 4’s Dead Ringers, repeatedly correcting Gary Lineker’s sloppy thinking and Harry’s Kane’s flights of fancy with a kindly but firm ‘No, Gary’ and ‘No, Harry’ before explaining to them exactly what’s what. There’s always a special affection about the way the studio audience laugh at your small speeches and cheer when the sketches conclude.

After Southgate’s touchy-feeliness, how refreshing is his down-to-earth style

After Southgate’s touchy-feeliness, how refreshing is your down-to-earth style! England’s victory over Norway was met with a brusque: ‘The commitment is there, but we made life very, very difficult for us in the way we played…sloppy, lot of technical mistakes, not fast enough. We were lucky today.’ Jude Bellingham’s response, in contrast, seemed to sum up the brattiness of modern footballers ‘Yeah, well, whatever. It’s difficult out there…all of the players have put in a very tough shift.’ Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt us to try to be a little more, well, German?

I can’t believe I wrote that; I loathed ‘the Krauts’ for most of my life. I loved it when I found out that my pin-up Princess Diana referred witheringly to her in-laws as ‘the Germans’. I smirked every time I heard the ‘Dad’s Army’ theme (‘Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler?/If you think old England’s done/We are the boys who will stop your little game/We are the boys who will make you think again…’) even though I’m aware that it’s a pastiche of a war-time song, not a real one.

Of course, it started with the Shoah. Although I have no Jewish heritage, I’ve been fiercely – insanely – philo-Semitic since I was a child, and it was finding out about the Holocaust that did it. Everything I heard about Germany made me hate them more, from their oompah-music to their excessive pig-consumption. Their horrible language, which sounded as if they were trying to clear their throats – probably of pieces of pig.

When I was assigned to learn German at school, it was the start of my career as a prolific truant. A few years later, as a 17-year-old, I was stuck in an old-fashioned railway carriage with no corridors when a bunch of perfectly pleasant German backpackers got in. I bore their chatter for awhile and then I did a thing I’ve never done before or since – pulled the communication cord and jumped out in the middle of nowhere. As Martin Crane said to Frasier; ‘Maris is learning German? Wow, just when you thought she couldn’t get any cuddlier!’

And then there were the lectures. We were The Sick Man of Europe; they were the wunderkind, workers of an actual Economic Miracle. That we, a tiny nation, had broken ourselves financially in a bid to defeat the Nazi menace never seemed of any importance to these traitors. When the Common Market became the EU, our conquering by this guttural foe seemed complete.

But then, in the 1990s, a strange thing happened. My writing became popular in Germany and I had two novels and a collection of essays translated into the language. My translators were all lovely young women; clever and, amazingly, funny. My prejudices against the Germans took a bit of a knock – and then, in 2019, I was offered a trip to Berlin. For many years people had been telling me how much I’d love it there. But there was always one major obstacle to my embracing it: it was full of Germans.

I know Berlin isn’t Germany. But yes, I loved it; incredibly, I found it less authoritarian and nannyish than Theresa May’s Britain. Berlin seemed much freer than London; despite the German ban on smoking in public places since 2008 every outside table bore beckoning ashtrays – there was even a delightful smoking garden alongside the actual airport boarding gate; not the squalid little get-it-over-with areas you find at British airports but with comfy chairs and tasty snacks.

Oh Thomas Tuchel, how I love you! Unlike Saint Gareth of Southgate, there’s no fashionable theories about sad young men

I found the people charming: ‘We love the English,’ a waitress told me, ‘always you’re eating, drinking and making fun!’ ‘You have beautiful eyes and I accept all major currencies,’ a tramp twinkled at me.

It was strange to see road-signs saying SPANDAU and POTSDAM, and for a moment I’d experience a jolt of hatred, and have to mention the war to our guide. She was never offended. But whenever I mentioned Brexit to anyone, a look of almost physical pain swept over their faces, like they’d been struck. Being there, I sort of understood it; when you’ve had such a traumatic century (even if it was your own fault) you’re going to hate any idea of change once you’ve established stability in the next one. Whereas we had a 20th century of being on ‘the right side of history’ (awful phrase, but true) and we could afford to be more curious and even reckless about what a different way of running our country might be like.

Much has happened since then. If Brexit didn’t turn out quite the way we wanted (because we didn’t get enough of it) then the fortunes of Germany, at the heart of the European project, have also not flourished; a Times headline last month read, incredibly, ‘Why The Germans Are Poorer Than Us.’ Many of their problems are ours – particularly mass immigration from Muslim countries – and so, as here, a populist party has flourished. But Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD, is a handsome blonde lesbian shacked up with a Sri Lankan – which makes Nige look a little vanilla. Insufferable books like John Kampfner’s 2020 prolonged scold ‘Why The Germans Do It Better: Notes From A Grown-Up Country’ (‘a lament on the state of contemporary, growth-stunted Britain’; the Irish Times) will no longer hold them up as a shining example to us. Our perfect cousin is in the same scheisse as the rest of us, and it’s made them a lot more likeable.

And now we have Thomas Tuchel, who was announced as head coach of the England team on the first day of 2025; he said, perfectly: ‘I have long felt a personal connection to the game in this country…it is a huge privilege’. He came with a healthy history of rebellion and courtesy; at Paris Saint-German he was told that he must ‘respect the people above him’ by the club’s ‘sporting director’, while speaking of his management style, the footballer Marcus Bettinelli has said ‘Whether you’re the chef, the bin man or gardener…he likes to ask how your family are, how you’re doing. It’s small things like that [which] help you feel comfortable’.

And he’s not Gareth Southgate! The Observer put it well: ‘He has made it plain that he does not see his role as speaking out on social issues; he does not regard his position as one that comes complete with a moral duty, as Southgate did. It is, instead, his job. He is not being gauged on the human beings he shapes. He has succeeded only because he wins.’

So though I’ll be cheering for England when we play Argentina on Wednesday, it will be their German manager whose face in triumph I’ll be yearning to see, not those of the spoilt English ball-kickers. Prost!