THOMAS Tuchel will hope to avoid the fate of the last England manager to take his team to Boston.
Back in 1993, Graham Taylor’s reign was already on the rocks after the 2-0 World Cup qualifying debacle to Norway in Oslo.
But things went from bad to even worse – and Taylor’s fate was even more sealed.
The FA had agreed to join Germany, Brazil and the hosts in the four-team US Cup as initial preparation for the following summer.
Of course, by the time Taylor’s team boarded their flight across the Atlantic, the likelihood that England were not going to be part of the 1994 World Cup was increasingly strong.
And any thoughts that they might be unlucky, with redemption around the corner were swiftly ended.
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After “Norse Manure” in Oslo, The Sun memorably summed up the England debacle with the back page: “Yanks 2 Planks 0”
It was deserved, too.
The game was played in the old Foxboro Stadium, like its modern bigger brother – more than twice the size and on the same plot of land – the home of the New England Patriots and 22 miles south west of Boston itself.
Taylor’s team, though, barely saw the end zone, let alone the US goal, in a horror show of a performance.
This was a nearly full-strength England – with the obvious exception of the injured Paul Gascoigne and David Platt.
Taylor played Les Ferdinand at centre-forward, with John Barnes and Lee Sharpe offering width and Paul Ince wearing the armband – England’s first black captain.
But England were frankly awful, all the more so as SIX of the US team were not even contracted to a club.
One of those who was, Kaiserslautern’s Thomas Dooley, put the hosts in front with a diving header just before the break.
Taylor’s team improved, slightly, efforts by substitute Ian Wright and Nigel Clough repelled by keeper Tony Meola.
But hope was extinguished when a bloke who looked like the TV character Catweasel – although Alexei Lalas was a lot smarter on Fifa back-slapping duty in Washington DC on Saturday night – headed home the killer second.
Taylor’s tour limped on, Platt securing a draw against Brazil in Washington before a 2-1 defeat to the Germans – whose own World Cup was to end prematurely to Bulgaria a year later – under the roof of the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit.
Within five months, though, in no small measure thanks to a dodgy ref in Rotterdam, Taylor was out, booted after San Marino scored in seven seconds in a game that was already virtually meaningless.
By 2002, so was the Foxboro Stadium, knocked down for the gleaming replacement which stands there now.
Tuchel will hope for more luck against Ghana’s Black Stars on June 23.
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