‘Cole Palmer misses too many opportunities to impress’ - Tuchel says it’s ‘not personal’ after omitting Chelsea

I guess everyone is desperate to play for England and Cole is no exception, but we can only, we're speaking now about the player who is not in camp and on the other hand it counts when you are in camp and I just said it last time, he misses too many opportunities to impress. It was a long camp, it was two and a half weeks and the players and the boys who were in camp built something extraordinary throughout these two and a half weeks and that's why the credit goes to them, the trust is for them. If you are in camp, this is your chance to impress and so it's not personal and of course we will never assume that Cole is not in the mindset to come and desperate to play for his country but the competition is on. The players who were in camp did an amazing job and kept their place. It's an incredible achievement for the family and for the brothers to be both nominated for their national team, which is an incredible story in itself. Um... Like I said, I was very happy to give him the call-up and I saw his excitement straight away in his smile. He has a very open and calm personality, so it was a very nice phone call of course because it was very good news. We see him in central midfield, like I said, so he's one of five players now for the central midfield. He's a more defensive player than And then his brother Jude. He's the captain of the U21s, so I think the door should always be open for the pathway, always be open for special performances over a long period of time and that's what Jude has done. On top of it, he found his way and found his rhythm with Dortmund, has an excellent start to the season, is a regular starter now there and very influential. We were not happy about this. We could understand the disappointment of the fans, of course, with what happened before. But I think if everyone, I think this is expressed now and this should be a closed book because I think everyone could also see the investment of... The quality of Ben and how he presented himself in the March camp before the World Cup, he did excellent and then scored for us and then we conceded penalty. Of course it was very eventful for him, not so easy to come back. When I speak to him I always feel the hunger to come back and the excitement. Yeah, it's just an incredible achievement that these two occasions come together in one and that we are able to witness this in person. He wins the Ballon d'Or and deservedly so and in the next game for England he gets the all-time record with 126 matches. Just incredible achievements. He just underlines his professional status and his demeanour and his attitude. He's our captain and I cannot find a better frame and a better match-up to celebrate him and his achievement. Me personally, I'm targeting top spot and I would be very surprised if my group doesn't. This is clearly the target. We want to have a final in Spain because we want to have these pressure moments and we want to have these matches when we play for something. We want to play under pressure and we want to play in the big occasions. We want to use Nations League for exactly that, to be prepared in the best possible way then for the Euros. So So for me, Croatia is a crucial match, is a crucial match to win.