The UK Government is preparing a £500,000 victory parade for the England squad, should they manage to bring football home this summer. Thomas Tuchel is aiming to become the first England manager in 60 years to win the World Cup, with optimism high ahead of what could be a gigantic few weeks.
England are among the favourites to win the tournament, with the Three Lions having been drawn into a group with Croatia, Ghana and Panama. The matches will get considerably more difficult as the tournament progresses, with the likes of Spain, France and Argentina also fancied.
The final is scheduled for July 19 in New Jersey, and it’s reported by The Sun that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is working on a date for the week after, should England triumph. Whitehall chiefs are believed to have informally consulted the FA on how best to manage a crowd that could be in the millions, with a parade that would look similar to the Lionesses’ celebrations after their Euro 2025 win.
It’s an ambitious project, not least because England haven’t even reached the World Cup final since they last won it in 1966. However, even just drawing up the plans is believed to have cost thousands, with the overall price of the parade expected to be around £500,000.
While a hefty expense, it’s said that the boost to national morale, as well as the tourism boost, would be seen as a good enough reason to push through with the plans. However, one obstacle could be getting all of the players back from the United States in time.
The flight time from New York to London is around seven hours, meaning it would most likely not be possible to host it on the Monday after the final. Instead, it may have to be held later that week.
That’s only if England are successful, with Tuchel having urged his players to step it up a gear after Saturday’s warm-up match against New Zealand. The German said after the 1-0 win: “The first half we were out of position, and it was a bit too much freestyle.
“That slowed our game down and made it difficult for counter-press because we were not in the positions that we wanted to be when we started attacking, so that’s basically the story of the match. To put it in context, a lot of our players played the last time together in November, so it’s half a year ago.
“We have four training sessions together and we mixed the team up completely, so we never played before in these combinations and formation to give everyone 45 minutes.