‘Second star on the jersey’: Dan Burn tunes in to Tuchel’s England vision | Thomas Tuchel

Thomas Tuchel ushered in a fresh dawn with England by spelling out to the players that it was purely about winning the 2026 World Cup.

The head coach delivered an inspirational address at St George’s Park on ­Monday, according to Dan Burn, who is a part of the squad for the first time, stressing that the time together would be short and every day counted.

“He said that the goal is to put another star on the jersey,” Burn said. “Speaking to the lads after, everyone was very impressed with how he came across – with his vision of what he wanted to do. You could just see ­looking around that people were tuned in and really want to buy into that.”

Tuchel, who is preparing for the qualifying ties at Wembley against Albania on Friday and Latvia on ­Monday, made the point that there would be only 24 days of training before the World Cup. As such, it was even more important to ­create a spirit of “brother­hood” – one in which every­body pushed one another and, as Burn put it, no one was “afraid to speak up if something is not right or should change”.

The Newcastle defender said: “For that initial meeting, it was more pro­bably about a mentality and how he wanted us to act around each other. He said he’d spoken to players from previous tournaments and from other countries about what the difference was between when they went out in early rounds and what happened when they won it. And a lot of it was about interactions.

“In the NBA [Tuchel said], the best teams historically are normally the teams who are high-fiving each other, picking each other up and have a lot of those interactions. Knowing that we do a lot of that at Newcastle and speak about it, I think they can keep people switched on, give people little bits to keep motivation levels high. That’s something that we’ll probably look into and implement.”

Burn is living the dream, following up his England selection – which Tuchel told him about last Thursday night – with a goalscoring, man-of-the-match performance in the Carabao Cup final win against Liverpool on Sunday. Burn said he had sought to park the ­England news to focus on the final with Newcastle and he did something similar with the celebrations of his club’s first domestic trophy in 70 years as his attention turned to the internationals.

Burn’s boyhood hero, the former Newcastle captain Alan Shearer, told him that he should simply retire now. “I said ‘I’ve got England tomorrow’,” Burn said. “It was getting a bit rowdy [at the Newcastle team hotel afterwards] and I was just ready to go to sleep!

“Sunday hasn’t sunk in and I don’t think it will for a long time. I still feel pretty numb about it all. I really want to feel something but my focus is completely on what I can do here for England.

“I’ve had so many messages. I’ve had the same phone number since I was 16 so I’ll probably have to change that at some point. It was stressing me out not replying to everyone so I sat for about two hours [on Monday night] just texting everyone back.”

Burn’s story has been well told. The release by Newcastle when he was a boy, not being able to make local and county teams, playing youth football for Blyth Town and Blyth Spartans. He cut his teeth in the professional game at Darlington, for whom he played in League Two and the Conference. He was released by Fulham at 24. He became a Premier League regular at Brighton only in 2019-20.

“I have been doubted a lot throughout my career,” the 32-year-old said. “Not many people who watched me play at Darlington would think I’d be sat here doing a press conference with England. I feel like I just really had this chip on my shoulder that I want to prove people wrong.

“When you have been passed over for so many international breaks, you accept that the time has passed. But the new manager has taken that chance on me and I just want to grasp that opportunity. It’s similar to when I went to Newcastle [in January 2022]. I thought that opportunity had passed me by but I’ve managed to do that.”

Tuchel had joked last Friday that Burn was very tall but easily overlooked. Did Burn smile at that? “Yeah, a little bit but it’s probably the story of my career,” he said. “Visually on the pitch, if I do make a mistake, I feel it is probably magnified just by how it looks. I was surprised how tall the gaffer was. I obviously remember him from Chelsea but I never noticed that!”

Tuchel oversaw training with his full squad on Tuesday afternoon, three under-21 players also joining in – Taylor Harwood-­Bellis, Adam Wharton and Liam Delap. Burn wants to go step-by-step, to get on for his first cap at some point but, ­having ended one decades-long trophy drought, he wondered whether the same could happen with England.

“I see a lot of similarities between Newcastle and England in that respect. From speaking to him [Tuchel] last night, I’ve got confidence that everything will be done to try to finally bring the trophy home.”