Cole Palmer is back doing outrageous things, and the temptation is obvious: look at the way he’s ripping through Premier League defences and ask what on earth Thomas Tuchel was thinking last summer.
The evidence is all over the highlight reels. The delicate first-time flick into Joao Pedro against Fulham, followed by that cold, drilled finish under Bernd Leno. The sudden burst of pace and 20-yard whip past Brighton’s Bart Verbruggen. The clever drift to the edges of Hull’s back line, waiting, waiting, then exploding around the outside to square for Pedro again.
This version of Cole Palmer – the one who toys with angles, tempo and defenders’ sanity – never boarded the plane to the World Cup. He never even got near it.
The year Palmer disappeared
On the face of it, Tuchel’s decision looks baffling. Palmer had stacked up 42 goal contributions for Chelsea in 2023/24, then added another 32 in 2024/25. Those are superstar numbers. But when it really mattered, his form fell off a cliff.
In 2025/26 he managed only 14 goal contributions across the entire season. Just two came in the final 12 games. For a player built on rhythm and confidence, the drop was brutal.
The groin injury that disrupted the start of that campaign never truly left him. He played, but not as himself. Tuchel wasn’t ignoring the Cole Palmer who had stuck four past Brighton the previous year, or the one who dismantled PSG in the Club World Cup final in New Jersey, the same stadium earmarked for the World Cup showpiece. That player simply wasn’t on the pitch.
By spring, had Palmer been anything like that version, his ticket to North America would have been almost guaranteed. Tuchel even tried to coax it out of him. He gave him minutes in March’s international break, including the 1-0 defeat to Japan at Wembley. Palmer wandered through that match like a man searching for a thought he’d just lost. The first touch that usually clings to his foot deserted him. The shoulders sagged. The spark wasn’t there.
So when the squad was named and Palmer’s name wasn’t on it, the backlash was inevitable. The regret, though? Tuchel insists there was none.
“No,” he said when asked if he second-guessed the call. “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.”
A different Cole, a different conversation
Now the landscape has shifted. Palmer is back in the England squad for the 2026/27 Nations League fixtures against Spain, Croatia and Czechia. The numbers tell you why.
“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.”
The statistics are one thing. The swagger is something else entirely.
Watch him now and there’s a particular rhythm to the way he prowls around the pitch, always scanning for the weak seam in a defensive block. One drop of the shoulder and a defender heads down a road that doesn’t exist. Those little bursts of acceleration cut against his languid body language, as if he’s been idling in second gear only to slam it into fifth without warning.
There is, right now, no one who quite looks or moves like Cole Palmer. The long, gangly limbs, the sharp elbows and knees, the way he seems slightly off-kilter yet always in control – like a stick insect with an agenda. He doesn’t fit the classic silhouette of a modern No 10, and that only adds to his intrigue.
His football brain doesn’t feel particularly English either. He solves problems on the move, improvising routes through traffic, reshaping attacks in real time. For an England side that has often struggled to unlock deep, disciplined defences, that kind of imagination is not a luxury. It’s a weapon.
Beating the queue – with a warning attached
Palmer has had to elbow aside serious competition to reclaim his place. Phil Foden, bright at the start of the season before his red card in the Manchester derby, has been left out. Fulham’s Joshua King came under discussion but stayed home. Morgan Gibbs-White, outstanding for Nottingham Forest and central to their survival, remains on the outside.
Gibbs-White, Tuchel admitted, came especially close. “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.”
Palmer has won that particular argument. But Tuchel made sure the victory came with a sharp edge.
“It is one thing to be nominated, by the way, like with Cole, getting your ticket back in the squad,” he said. “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 the next test. Palmer’s England record so far is modest: two goals and one assist in 14 appearances. He can point out, with some justification, that he has started only six of those games. Even so, the gap between his club form and his international output is clear.
Now he returns in a very different state: fit, firing, and unburdened by injury. That, in its own way, feeds back into Tuchel’s lack of remorse about leaving him out of the World Cup squad. The version of Palmer England have now may be the product of that frustration, that sense of being left behind while the biggest tournament in the world passed him by.
“The quality of Cole Palmer, we don’t need to talk about it,” Tuchel said. “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.”
Palmer has taken the first step again. The question now is whether this reinvented, ruthless playmaker can finally bend England games to his will – or whether the World Cup that got away will be the one that defines him.
