How Tuchel wowed the FA during secret meeting at Munich airport

“The overwhelming criteria was I wanted someone we could put in front of the players and they would say: ‘Thank you, you’ve given us a chance to win.’”

The last of the five the FA reached out to was Thomas Tuchel who, initially, proved hard even to get on the phone. Eventually he took a call from McDermott. The conversation was supposed to be of the brief, “Are you interested?” sort, but they talked for well over an hour.

Once Tuchel is in, he is all in, say those who know the German best, and when McDermott travelled to Munich for face-to-face discussions, he was met with a whirlwind.

“There was a connection straight away,” McDermott says. “He loved football. He loved English football. He asked me a million questions about the Euros, about the players.

‘He’d had an incredible experience at Chelsea. A bit like when you speak to Mauricio [Pochettino – whom McDermott worked with at Tottenham], he just loved the Premier League, feels there’s something magnetic about it.

“Thomas is almost Latin in the way he speaks. There’s a warmth and tactileness. He comes alive when he’s speaking about the team, the players, the games. I’m not sure [managing England] was something he was thinking of before our initial call, but he was certainly hooked.”

Pep Guardiola was sounded out during the process, though the FA has never confirmed this. Photograph: Paul Childs/Action Images/Reuters

Wind back. Actually, McDermott met two whirlwinds. His day in Munich ended with dinner with Tuchel, but began with a one-to-one with Anthony Barry. “When we sat down, just me and him, again what came through was passion,” McDermott says.

To get Barry as part of the Tuchel package was a considerable bonus. None of the candidates identified in the “super-elite” bracket were English, though several in the tiers below were and the FA talked to at least three English candidates, partly with an eye on the future. If their time wasn’t now, these could be England managers further down the line.

However, hiring Barry alongside Tuchel would allow the FA to get an outstanding young English coach into their system, one who would be working directly with the England team. Why was nationality not decisive when it came to the top job? “Just because of the depth of the talent pool,” Bullingham says.

“We were starting with the priority we wanted to have someone to help us win. In our role you would love to be sitting in a room analysing a talent pool where there are between five and 10 English managers you felt could win tournaments. We didn’t feel that. We thought it was a relatively small talent pool and we wanted to go beyond it.”

Bullingham’s first encounter with Tuchel and Barry was in an unusual location. McDermott’s trip to Munich left him eager to bring the chief executive out to Germany to see the pair, but they were desperate to stay under the radar. So, a meeting was organised at a German airport, where the FA hired a private room and McDermott and Bullingham flew there on separate flights – just in case they were recognised.

The meeting? “I think it’s safe to say Thomas blew us away,” Bullingham says. “He had a PowerPoint presentation about how to put a second star on the shirt and it was so well thought through, right down to what the next 18 months would look like in terms of days at St George’s Park and how he would get the best out of players, how he would link with players, how he was going to maintain relationships, what he felt was important going into the World Cup.

Thomas Tuchel dishes out instructions to his players during England’s friendly against Japan at Wembley in March. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

“It was the type of presentation you might expect on a third or fourth meeting – and still be impressed by – but this was the first proper meeting. And it wasn’t just the presentation and slides, it was the passion and eloquence with which he was delivering it. It was brilliant.”

McDermott wasn’t at all surprised, but “I was pleased Mark wasn’t disappointed. In that more formal environment where you’re presenting, Thomas excelled just as much as in the more informal, conversational environment.

“I sometimes think you’ve got to be bilingual [in any top football role]. You’ve got to speak the language of the training ground, but then there’s also the executive level, especially with the England job. And Thomas is very articulate, whatever the setting.”

This is an edited extract from Inside England: Behind the Scenes of the Three Lions’ World Cup Dream (Bonnier Books, £10.99) by Rob Draper and Jonathan Northcroft*. To support the Guardian, order your copy at* guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.