The manager was talking after the Three Lions opened their World Cup campaign in style.

Thomas Tuchel hailed Jude Bellingham for buying into England’s team spirit after the Black Country ace starred in Wednesday’s impressive 4-2 World Cup win over Croatia.

Stourbridge-born Bellingham got the nod to start the Group L opener over childhood pal Morgan Rogers and promptly delivered for his manager, scoring England’s third and kickstarting an excellent second half performance, after the teams had gone in level 2-2 at the break.

The Real Madrid man’s relationship with Tuchel has come under scrutiny in the past, with the Three Lions boss appearing on occasion to question the 22-year-old’s attitude.

But after beating Croatia in Dallas he was full of praise for Bellingham’s desire to be a “team player” and his ability to produce on the big occasion.

"You can rely on Jude in these moments. He loves these pressure games. That brings out the best in him," said Tuchel.

"It's an easy decision to let him play and trust him, also because of the last 17 days how he bought into the idea of team spirit, the idea of brotherhood and the idea of how we want to play football which is a slightly different position to his position in Real Madrid.”

Villa star Rogers was the only player to have started all of England’s qualifiers but had to make do with a place on the bench.

Tuchel continued: "The tough decision was to say to Morgan Rogers he will not start because he deserves 100 per cent to start and he did ever so well for us and me.

"Jude was very reliable and did his very best to be a top team player for us.

"We do this as a team. The team and every player is ready to do it as a team. We can just do it together as a group if we want to push it all the way and today was a very good first step."

England twice led in the first half through Harry Kane but were pegged back on both occasions.

Bellingham restored the lead within two minutes of the restart with an excellent run and finish, with substitute Marcus Rashford scoring late on to seal the win.

Tuchel’s assistant, Anthony Barry, had been critical of England’s “fearful” first half performance during a half-time TV interview.

Skipper Kane revealed the manager had expressed the same sentiment in the dressing room.

He told ITV:"Credit to the manager, he gave us a speech at half-time and said if we lose, we lose in our way, and I think we saw that in the way we came out in the second half.

"We went full gas and they couldn't live with it. Credit to everyone for the first game of the tournament."