Tuchel: Heat and humidity obstacles for England at World Cup

Heat and humidity will be obstacles to overcome but England have full belief in their ability and can go far at the World Cup, Thomas Tuchel has said. The head coach has received help from Team GB, drawing on their Olympic experiences, and other specialists to find solutions for the weather conditions.

Some of Tuchel’s 26-player squad flew from Birmingham to Miami on Monday for a 10-day hot-weather acclimatisation camp. Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Noni Madueke and Eberechi Eze have been given more time to recover after Saturday’s Champions League final and Crystal Palace’s Dean Henderson, who played the Conference League final last week, is also expected to be a later arrival.

The other 21 players, some of them on holiday in the Americas and Caribbean, will meet up in West Palm Beach to prepare for a friendly against New Zealand in Tampa on Saturday. Tuchel recognised the heat would not be to England’s advantage after a long and demanding club season.

“We are not used to being in this kind of heat and humidity, and even altitude if we play in Mexico,” he told Sky Sports. “There will be a lot of challenges in this World Cup. The heat is one of them but we are prepared already.

“We know the individual reaction of the players to the heat and we have cooling strategies in place. We’ve had help from Team GB and specialists all over the world to come up with solutions that help the players to adapt.

“We know exactly the amount of time we want to expose them in pre-camp, the ideal amount of time that you should train in the sun and that we also don’t do too much.”

Scorching heat was a major concern at the June-July 2025 Club World Cup in the US, with medical experts and players’ unions expressing concerns about heat stress, dehydration and slower recovery times. Tuchel said England were not making excuses before the tournament in the US, Canada and Mexico.

“It [the heat] is a factor but it should not come across that we are already making excuses,” he said. “It’s just not in our favour and it is an obstacle to overcome.”

Tuchel said he was positive about what lies ahead. “When I reconnected with the games and built our training sessions and meetings to reconnect the team in Florida with what we have built already, I saw a lot of quality,” he said. “That instantly gave me the full belief and excitement that we can go a long way.”