“I would give my life on the pitch for him. He’s a truly brilliant man,” said none other than Neymar Jr. to Canal+’s Raphael Domenach when asked about the man who coached two and a half of his peak years at Paris Saint-Germain.
It is clear that this sentiment is not unique to the iconic Brazilian winger, either. Chelsea’s surprise 2021 Champions League triumph was a virtuoso coaching performance by Thomas Tuchel, underpinned by relentless belief and application from each of his unfancied players. There are few minds in football that can generate that level of performance in the technical area.
Fast forward to January 2024 and Tuchel is staring down a second dismissal in as many years with Bayern Munich’s decade-long hegemony of the German game as precarious as it has ever been. The football has been desperately poor in key moments and Tuchel appears to have damaged relationships with senior players and club personnel, not for the first or even the second time.
Amid his various tactical evolutions to suit the team at his disposal, Tuchel has always been a man for whom football comes first. He tires easily of upstairs club politics and grows publicly irritable when such issues begin casting shadows over his matches and training sessions. It is therefore no wonder that his Chelsea tenure, while still employed by an increasingly absent Roman Abramovich before the club was transferred to Clearlake Capital, was such a highlight. He was in his element, revitalising the demoralised yet impressionable squad in front of him, willing to serve bespoke roles in a watertight back-five system with the roadmap to glory clear. Tuchel no doubt quietly laments that these circumstances have not been the reality in his jobs in Paris and Bavaria.
Is it feasible for an elite coach to expect to be left to their own devices in this era of the game, where the transfer rumour-industrial complex counts for no less than the on-pitch product? There is surely no one who would deserve these favourable conditions as much as the German, given his record of back-to-back Champions League finals, domestic and continental trophies, and an imperious level of peak output across multiple leagues. Nonetheless, if his time at the helm of Bayern is to be unceremoniously cut short, as is rumoured, the enigmatic Tuchel may have to learn to demonstrate the same hard-headed pragmatism with boardroom bureaucrats as he does with his players.
“Thomas Tuchel Chelsea” by Анна Мейер is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.