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“It’s just March,” Thomas Tuchel said after a winless international break. March doesn’t matter. March is for winding up the Wembley crowd by playing Ben White. For Phil Foden as a false 9. For Dominic Calvert-Lewin agonising over narrow misses. For Jason Steele in the crucial emergency fifth goalkeeper spot.

Will any of this matter when England head to Miami for their World Cup training camp on 1 June? History suggests the answer is yes … but also no. The last camps before a tournament can be odd. For Tuchel, comparisons with the past are awkward. The modern calendar has been squeezed by the club game and it is not surprising that his players are exhausted when the physical demands on Premier League teams are so extreme.

The pace was gentler when Sir Alf Ramsey found solutions in a host of friendlies in the run-up to the 1966 World Cup. Geoff Hurst, scorer of a hat-trick in the final against West Germany, made his international debut only in February of that year. Ramsey had a lot space to experiment. England went on a tour of Scandinavia in June (their opening game at the World Cup was on 11 July) and it is worth pointing out that Martin Peters, England’s other scorer in the final, did not win his first cap until a friendly against Yugoslavia on 4 May 1966.

Tuchel has just had a week and an understrength squad for friendlies against Uruguay and Japan. He has at least seen what doesn’t work. It would probably be better if he had found a way to play without Harry Kane. However, it is not unusual for the lineup in the last international break before a tournament to look out of whack by the time the wall charts are up. Managers try weird and wonderful things. Sven-Göran Eriksson was not exactly on to something when England lost 1-0 to Sweden in March 2004. Anthony Gardner and Alan Thompson won their first and last caps. England were limp – but their lineup was short of eight players who started the opening group game against France at Euro 2004.

Eriksson tinkered. In March 2006, he started Darren Bent in a 2-1 win against Uruguay but left the forward out of his World Cup squad two months later. In April 2002, the England team that crushed Paraguay 4-0 at Anfield bore little resemblance to the one that began the World Cup with a 1-1 draw with Sweden and meekly went out against Brazil in the last eight.

None of this is because managers want to deceive. Some, such as Fabio Capello, become frazzled as a tournament approaches. Others find plans disrupted because these friendlies take place during the decisive point of the club season, and football is unpredictable. Injuries happen. Players lose form. Theo Walcott played 57 minutes on the right wing when England came from behind to beat Egypt 3-1 in March 2010, but the Arsenal forward was the biggest omission when Capello named his squad for the South Africa World Cup.

His XI against Egypt featured three players who did not make the final squad. In a similar vein, perhaps a group stage exit was inevitable when Roy Hodgson sent out a team that had never trained together once before England’s opener against Italy at the 2014 World Cup.

It is better to have a clear direction of travel. Gareth Southgate used a March friendly against the Netherlands to hone the system that took England to the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup. He used a back three and there was surprise that Kyle Walker was part of a central trio with John Stones and Joe Gomez, who would soon lose his place to Harry Maguire because of injury.

Southgate saw positives and negatives. He was right on Walker but an unconvincing performance from Danny Rose led to Ashley Young coming in at left wing-back. Six years later, Southgate’s England were hit by a spate of withdrawals as they tried to finalise their preparations for Euro 2024 with March friendlies against Brazil and Belgium. The result? Confusion. There were only five survivors from the Belgium game when England beat Serbia in their Euros opener.

Admittedly England were poor at that tournament, reaching the final more by luck than judgment. It does seem preferable for something good to come out of these camps. Remember, England’s run to the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup was prefaced by Paul Gascoigne forcing himself into the squad with a virtuoso display against Czechoslovakia in April.

There was also Glenn Hoddle using a 3-0 win over Portugal in an April friendly to fine-tune his 3-5-2 for the 1998 World Cup. David Beckham was the wing-back that night and infamously the only player from the Portugal game not to start when England beat Tunisia in their opening game in France, where they went on to lose an epic against Argentina in the last 16.

In 1998, though, there were not six English sides in an expanded Champions League. There was no month-long Club World Cup. Hoddle, unlike Tuchel, did not have to fret about fatigue this much. The calendar was not even this extreme when Southgate played that warm-up against the Netherlands eight years ago.

There is no doubt it is preferable to have momentum. Tuchel needs to refocus before June. Then again, how about this from the months leading into England reaching the Euro 96 semi-finals? March brought Les Ferdinand scoring the only goal in a 1-0 win over Bulgaria. A sign of things to come? Not quite. Terry Venables did not give Ferdinand a minute at the Euros. In fact, with Alan Shearer sidelined after surgery on a groin injury, Venables started Robbie Fowler with Teddy Sheringham when England drew 0-0 with Croatia in April 1996.

What did that mean? Shearer returned to fitness and started the opening game against Switzerland. He was under pressure after 12 games without an international goal but he scored in a 1-1 draw with the Swiss and won the Golden Boot.

Maybe Tuchel should be trusted when he promises England will be ready in June.