Nicky Butt Urges Mainoo to Skip Third-Place Game and Critiques Tuchel
Nicky Butt has launched a fierce defence of Kobbie Mainoo and an equally fierce attack on Thomas Tuchel, urging the young midfielder to refuse to play in England’s World Cup third-place play-off and insisting the German should be sacked after the semi-final defeat to Argentina.
Mainoo, 21, muscled his way into Tuchel’s final squad on the back of a superb second half of the season at Manchester United, flourishing once Michael Carrick took interim charge at Old Trafford. He arrived at the World Cup as one of the form midfielders in England.
He leaves it without a single minute on the pitch.
Seven games, seven times on the bench. Not one appearance in a run that ended in heartbreak on Wednesday night as England fell to Argentina in the semi-finals. Now, with France awaiting in a Saturday night third-place decider, Tuchel is expected to shuffle his pack and finally hand Mainoo his debut.
Butt’s response? Don’t do it.
“I’d just refuse to play”
Speaking about Mainoo’s situation, the former United midfielder did not hold back.
“I do not know what is going on there, there’s something not quite right with it,” Butt said.
“Now they’re going to play the bomb squad in the stupid third-place game.
“I’d just refuse to play if I was Kobbie Mainoo. I’d say I was injured. It’s a nonsense game, especially when you’ve been treated like that.
“He’s not played a minute of football, now to go and start this pointless jumped-up friendly and potentially get injured for the whole season… no.”
It is a brutal assessment, but it cuts to a wider frustration: a player good enough to force his way into a World Cup squad on merit, reduced to a spectator until the game that many players secretly dread. The sense of being an afterthought, thrown in when the stakes have dropped, is exactly what Butt believes Mainoo should reject.
“No way he can stay on”
Butt’s criticism did not stop with team selection. He went straight for the FA and Tuchel’s position as England manager after the Argentina defeat.
“There’s no way he [Tuchel] can stay on. Not a cat in hell’s chance after that,” he said.
“If he stays on, John McDermott [the FA’s technical director] needs to be sacked as well.
“There’s no way you can keep him now. He’s not a Sir Bobby Robson or Kevin Keegan, someone that the nation loves.
“You’re talking about a manager that’s come in and played negative football, crazy negative football, in the semi-final against a beatable Argentina team.
“And it shouldn’t really matter, but people will go against him because he’s German as well, so he’s going to have a nightmare.”
The accusation is clear: Tuchel, renowned as an elite club coach, brought a cautious, restrictive approach to a tie Butt believes England could and should have attacked. The fallout, he argues, will be unforgiving.
“He’s an unbelievable club manager, so just let him go. He won’t want to stay. He might say he does, but deep down he’ll be thinking, ‘pay up, I’m out of here’.”
Howe, Pochettino… but not yet Pep
Butt did not simply call for Tuchel’s head; he laid out his preferred successors and why one obvious name cannot be considered yet.
“If we were nine months down the line, I’d definitely be going for Pep Guardiola. But Pep can’t leave Man City a month ago, saying he needs a rest from football, and then go straight back in. He can’t do that.”
So the focus, in Butt’s mind, turns to two managers already deeply respected in the English game.
“Eddie Howe would be brilliant. I’d love him to go in, it’d be great.
“Mauricio Pochettino’s got an unbelievable relationship with John McDermott. When McDermott was the academy manager at Tottenham, Pochettino was the manager, and they had a really, really good relationship.
“I was in and around it with the Manchester United academy, we would do training camps there so I’ve seen it first hand.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened and I wouldn’t be against it at all. He’s a very, very good manager. A likeable person, plays good football everywhere he goes.”
The names are familiar, but Butt’s argument is rooted in what he has seen: coaches who develop players, who work well with FA figures, who commit to front-foot football. The very traits he feels England lacked when it mattered most.
And yet, even with those options on the table, he circles back to a nagging concern.
“But we all said the same about Tuchel, yet when they go into that England dynamic, they just change, it’s crazy. I can’t put my finger on why.”
For Mainoo, the immediate decision is simpler than the FA’s looming one. Accept a long-awaited first cap in a game Butt calls “pointless”, or protect his body – and his pride – for a season in which his club career is set to explode.
For Tuchel and the FA, there is no such escape route. The semi-final defeat has already written its verdict. The only question now is who picks up the pieces.
