Ali Maxwell

A little bit dubious about Tuchel when he came in, just for various reasons.

We talked about how honest he is in press conferences.

I love it, but it makes me wince a little bit.

Well, it's the biggest, literally.

I'm not sure about the other two.

It's so tough to hear Billy talking about top cappers, people for whom following England is like pretty much everything because it takes a lot of time, effort, money, not being able to go because of this.

You know, we're very fortunate, the England pod, we're going out for the group stages.

We've managed to get a sponsorship to cover the trip.

Otherwise, there's no way we'd be going either, you know.

I think there's obviously so many different factors and you can travel cheaply or not so cheaply, but just for those watching who are just wanting a number maybe, because that's what never quite gets said, is I would say for a group of three, as we are, to go out for the group stages and do it the way that we want to do it, probably between 15 and 20 grand for a group of three.

So if you want to do the whole seven weeks and you want to stay out and you can take the time off work and family commitments, you know, we're talking double that, 30, 40 grand probably.

Yeah, so, I mean, look, I certainly don't want to speak for FIFA, but I think what they would say is, and I don't know the extent to which this actually happens, but they do an awful lot of work globally, right?

Whether it's good work or not good work, they certainly purport to invest a lot of money into the game globally and sometimes in much smaller nations who won't be in the World Cup.

And I guess so they see this as...

you know, their biggest revenue stream, right?

It's their big tournament.

It is their biggest way of making money.

So I guess for them, they would say, well, the more money we can make from this tournament, the more we can plough into good causes across the world.

Yeah, I mean, like Billy, you know, we've been following Tuchel's England pretty closely and he pretty much laid it all out throughout from his very first press conference until the squad announcement.

And more than any other England manager I can remember, he does just explain the reasons why he's done everything.