It might be tempting to watch Cole Palmer dismantle Premier League defences this season and wonder exactly what Thoams Tuchel was thinking. The little first-time flick into Joao Pedro to score against Fulham and his own piercing finish under Bernd Leno. The surge of acceleration before wrapping the ball past Brighton’s Bart Verbruggen from 20 yards. The intelligence to drift to the fringes where he could burst around Hull’s defence and tee up Joao Pedro for another.
How did Tuchel not take this player to the World Cup? The answer, of course, is that this player didn’t really exist last season. The timing of Palmer’s dip in form was impossibly cruel. He racked up 42 goal contributions for Chelsea in 2023/24 and produced 32 more in 2024/25. But those figures dropped to only 14 goal contributions in 2025/26, including just two in the final 12 games of the season.
Clearly he never fully recovered from the groin injury which disrupted the start of the campaign. Tuchel didn’t pick Cole Palmer for the World Cup because he wasn’t really watching Cole Palmer, certainly not the same player who scored four goals against Brighton the previous season, for example, or the player who dismantled PSG in the Club World Cup final 12 months earlier, notably in the New Jersey stadium which would host the World Cup final.
Had Tuchel been watching that Palmer back in the spring, there is little doubt he would have been handed a plane ticket to North America. The England manager even offered a chance for Palmer to defy his club form with appearances during the March international break. But he looked lost in that 1-0 defeat by Japan at Wembley, bereft of confidence, missing his velcro touch, walking around with the air of a man who’d forgotten why he went upstairs.
Did Tuchel regret his decision to leave Palmer at home this summer? “No,” he said. “I was very happy with the squad selection. I had a lot of sleepless nights [beforehand]. But I had not one sleepless night about our selection because I was more than seven weeks with this group of players, and they were nothing but fantastic.”
Now Palmer returns to the fold for England’s upcoming games against Spain, Croatia and Czechia in the 2026/27 Nations League. “He has his numbers back,” Tuchel said. “He has assists back. He has decisive goals back. So that’s why he’s in the squad, and I think he has a point to prove.”
He has his swagger back too. You can see it in that particular sway as he roams around the field searching for a defence’s soft spots, in the way he sends a defender down the wrong road with a simple drop of the shoulder, in the little bursts of acceleration which belie the languid demeanour.
Is there another footballer like Palmer right now? The gangly limbs and pointy joints are always in perfect balance, like a stick insect on a mission, and there is something compelling in the fact he doesn’t look quite like you expect an elite No 10 to look. There is an un-English quality to his creative mind, in that ability to problem-solve on the hoof, which perhaps makes his unique gifts even more beneficial to this England team.
Palmer held off plenty of competition to win back his place. Phil Foden was left out despite a bright start to the season, albeit he was sent off in the Manchester derby. Fulham’s Joshua King was considered but didn’t make the cut. Morgan Gibbs-White has been exceptional for Nottingham Forest all year long and yet is still on the outside looking in.
Gibbs-White was especially “close”, Tuchel explained. “We can see the form that Morgan is in and he ended the season very, very strongly, and was the key player for Forrest to not be relegated. We can see him stepping up now. But it makes no sense to nominate three, four, five No 10s. It just does not help anyone.”
Yet Palmer’s selection also came with a pointed warning, which Tuchel veered off topic to stress. “It is one thing to be nominated, by the way, like with Cole, getting your ticket back in the squad. But it’s another thing to perform for England. Especially Cole, he needs to step up when he comes and needs to show these kind of numbers and these kind of performances to get his place, to keep his shirt, to justify the decision.”
This is Palmer’s next frontier. He has scored only two goals and made one assist in 14 appearances for England. He might argue he has only been given six starts to prove himself. But now he has another chance, in form, fresh and free of injury. That might be another reason Tuchel has no regrets leaving Palmer out this summer. The player we see now is a direct result of the time, space, frustration and motivation that came with missing the World Cup.
“The quality of Cole Palmer, we don’t need to talk about it,” Tuchel added. “But [he needs] to show it … There are steps to be taken. The first step is to be nominated. The second step is to fight and perform on the highest level for that shirt.”
