Breaking the chains
In Myles Lewis-Skelly and Dan Burn, Thomas Tuchel understands England need a blend of the future and the past
Hello! Long time no see. I’ll have more to say about Redstory’s future soon and I will return to writing about Arsenal shortly. For now, here’s this.
As some of you will know, I covered England last summer and loved every second. The problem: England coverage didn’t really fit at SCOUTED, and I’ve been looking for a home for it since. Until a better solution arrives, this’ll do.
Immediately, energy. Marcus Rashford goes flying past his man and just misses his touch. Kyle Walker bursts round the outside. Jude Bellingham barges lesser beings out of his way through the middle. Curtis Jones makes a break beyond. Then, when nobody’s looking, there goes little Myles Lewis-Skelly - sneaking somehow onto the last man, a marooned Jasir Asani who’s tracked him all the way back. The 29-year-old is no match for the bullish child, of course. The kid from Camberwell holds him off with one easy hand and pokes the ball home.
Lewis-Skelly has emerged quietly, slowly, then all at once with an explosion of joyous braggadocio. Quiet might be a strange word for a boy who, at eighteen, has ripped and torn his way into genuine contention for Arsenal and England’s best elevens, but this is how it goes for so many players his age. Arsenal aficionados have known he was special since he was fourteen but few outside that closed circle ever mentioned his name without its usual suffix, Ethan Nwaneri, whose verve and penchant for a screamer always made him the more headline-ready prospect. No longer.
Nwaneri only managed a minute for a frankly absurd England U21’s attack that was last night outscored by Hugo Ekitike’s France. Lewis-Skelly was himself on the bench by then, withdrawn to a standing ovation inside Wembley. Attackers might draw eyes more easily, but there is something magnetic about Lewis-Skelly that has crept up on us all. It’s not just the boy’s personality, which is wonderful and saw him booked before his Arsenal debut, almost start a fight with a 6’4” Norwegian android and become the subject of at least two noisy media storms. It’s that he is a distinctly modern footballer, a central midfielder playing at left-back, a perfect blend of subtle physicality and refined technical culture. Watching Myles Lewis-Skelly feels like watching something new.
And who could be a more perfect flagbearer for Thomas Tuchel’s England than a herald of the future? Lewis-Skelly and Dan Burn’s debuts were second only in importance to the German’s, and he picked his subtitle well. “This is a joke,” laughed Lewis-Skelly as he looked up at Burn during a media appearance this week. Burn put his arm around him like a proud P.E. teacher clutching his favourite student on leaver’s day. Two debutants at the opposite ends of footballing careers and the height spectrum. Their hilarious and very sweet yin/yang drew some interest away from Tuchel during the camp and they did more on the pitch - against Albania, it was all about them.
Burn had 153 touches of the football and made 135 accurate passes. He smacked the bar with a roaring header. A product of England’s unmatched pyramid, a player who’s hugeness and brutality is matched only by a surprising amount of guile - some of his passes, strung from his left-foot into midfield, were lovely - Burn is so perfect for England it’s almost shocking his arrival has taken this long. He remains an outsider for 2026’s potential squad, but something feels necessary about England flying to a World Cup with an enormous, late-stage centre-back who spent most of his career in the Football League. If Lewis-Skelly is the future, Burn represents the past: and don’t all great national sides need a little of both?
That’s a dichotomy Thomas Tuchel seems to understand. He wants his team to reflect the Premier League, he said, a statement which was met by some gentle scoffs. What does that mean? Is that an intent to outrun and out-muscle everyone we meet, Thomas, because did you know Mexican summers are really hot and the players are already knackered?
England’s is the most physical league in the world, sure, and so that becomes an easy calling card - but it doesn’t entirely define it, and it need not define England. The league is in a fascinating transitional moment. Ball-carrying, chaos and invention are once again on the rise, the natural antidote to the positional control of eras past. Tuchel’s post-game comments about finding his wingers quickly and in space point to this being his aim. The past: a strong, structural base for build-up and suffocating transitions. The future: an organised chaos in which the best attackers in the world are given the freedom to attack.
‘Freedom’ is not the word I’d use to describe Gareth Southgate’s EURO2024 team, a collection of individuals who moved around the pitch like they were wearing straightjackets. Watch Lewis-Skelly drift infield, hop over a challenge and unleash a vicious transition through Marcus Rashford; now imagine Kieran Trippier and Phil Foden trying that. “We play with a hunger and the joy to win,” Tuchel said before the game. “Not with the fear to lose.” It was fear that was most evident in Southgate’s final tournament, and Tuchel’s biggest challenge is removing it. Because when you platform the best attackers in the world - when you remove fear from Jude Bellingham, Cole Palmer, Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford, Anthony Gordon, Harry Kane, Ollie Watkins, Phil Foden, good lord - you will win football games and you will win tournaments. Watch Nico Williams and Yamine Lamal run at their full-backs last summer - do you see fear? Now watch Myles Lewis-Skelly - still nothing? That, I think, is half of the point.
Albania was a slow and steady start but pay attention to the details and you’ll begin to see the chains crack. It was evident in every Lewis-Skelly skip and every Burn through-ball, but also in the lung-busting runs Rashford made from deep, the marauding overlaps from Walker, the easy joy with which Jones and Bellingham twisted through the middle. These are players learning, slowly, to shake off the shackles. They better get on with it: not long remains now to break free.
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