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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
"Absorbing. An essential primer for Chelsea fans and a warning to everyone who isn't a Chelsea fan." – Daniel Finkelstein "Daniel and Tobias were on the Tuchel train from the beginning and they give you the full story of one of the most fascinating coaches in the game. Instructive and revealing for the novice and with plenty of freshness for seasoned Tuchel watchers too. A very satisfying read." – Andy Brassell, The Football Ramble podcast *** When Thomas Tuchel arrived at Chelsea in January 2021, having been unceremoniously sacked by PSG, few could imagine that a mere four months later he would be leading the Blues to victory in the UEFA Champions League final. Tuchel inherited a misfiring Chelsea side that he quickly galvanised with his exciting attacking style and brilliant tactical thinking. But who is Thomas Tuchel? Fans of his former clubs PSG, Borussia Dortmund and Mainz would describe him as one of the best football managers in the world. An innovator, tactician, rulebreaker and sometimes controversialist, Tuchel went from a youth manager with Mainz to the top of the Bundesliga with Dortmund in just five years. He has identified and nurtured rising talents, such as André Schürrle and Christian Pulisic, and has also managed dressing rooms full of superstars, including Neymar and Kylian Mbappé. This is the definitive story of Thomas Tuchel: from his early days as an academy player at Augsburg and as a young manager at Mainz, to his successful but conflict-laden stint at Dortmund, his bittersweet tenure at PSG and finally his arrival mid-season at Chelsea. Compelling and revealing, Thomas Tuchel: Rulebreaker provides a fascinating insight into the life and mind of one of the most exciting coaching talents in football today.
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THOMAS TUCHEL
RULEBREAKER
DANIEL MEUREN AND TOBIAS SCHÄCHTER
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
‘ONE STEP BEYOND’
‘One Step Beyond’. Shortly after the final whistle on the evening of 29 May 2021, the Madness song starts blaring through the stadium speakers and the Chelsea squad and 6,000 of their fans start jubilantly dancing. But tonight, the ska band’s most famous song isn’t playing at Stamford Bridge; this is the Estádio do Dragão in Porto. Completely uninhibited, Chelsea coach Thomas Tuchel celebrates with his wife and two young daughters on the pitch. The 1–0 victory in the Champions League final against Manchester City thanks to a goal by Kai Havertz catapults Tuchel to the zenith of European managers – he is finally on a par with his compatriot Jürgen Klopp and his idol Pep Guardiola, whom he’s beaten tonight.
‘Thomas’, says his former mentor Hansi Kleitsch, ‘is now a world-class coach.’ Kleitsch once nurtured Tuchel, when the latter was Stuttgart’s youth coach. From then on, Tuchel’s career trajectory went steeply upwards – all the way to the 2summit of European club football on that May evening in Porto. Chelsea’s victory in the top flight goes hand in hand with one of the most improbable coaching achievements in Champions League history. But Tuchel did not only brilliantly out-coach his idol Guardiola in Porto. When the 47-year-old took over from club legend Frank Lampard in late January 2021, Chelsea were languishing in ninth place in the Premier League. ‘At that time, we weren’t in a good place,’ said German international Timo Werner in the aftermath of the Porto final. ‘We were way behind in the league and nobody rated us in the Champions League. The team might not have always been better individually than our opponents. But the younger players in particular have made great progress under Tuchel,’ Werner stated. Tuchel stabilised the team in a short time, leading them to fourth place, thus securing qualification for the Champions League, and he also led the Blues to the FA Cup final – where they lost 1–0 to Leicester.
At Chelsea, Tuchel is in his element. He has inherited a team with a lot of talent and room for improvement. The triumph in Porto also sent a message to his previous bosses of Paris Saint-Germain. The French club fired Tuchel just before Christmas 2020, even though he had led them to their first Champions League final the season before, in which the star ensemble around Neymar and Kylian Mbappé ended up losing 1–0 to Bayern. But after Tuchel left, PSG finished the Ligue 1 season in second place, behind Lille. Watching 3Tuchel kiss the trophy in Porto was a humiliation for the club’s Qatari owners and sporting director Leonardo.
This book aims to trace this extraordinary manager’s career and plot how he has developed into a star coach. It tells the story of Thomas Tuchel’s playing career, during which he played for two formative coaching personalities: the authoritarian Rolf Schafstall at Stuttgarter Kickers; and the perfectionist Ralf Rangnick at Ulm. After being forced to end his playing career following an injury, Tuchel began coaching at Stuttgart and Augsburg, where he encouraged his protégé, current Bayern coach Julian Nagelsmann, to become a manager too. At Mainz, he rose rapidly from being champion U19s coach to one of the country’s most promising young managers. In 2015, Tuchel made the move to Borussia Dortmund – his first big club – where he won his first trophy in the 2017 DFB-Pokal. However, shortly afterwards Tuchel and Dortmund parted ways. The diagnosis: untouchable as a professional, difficult as a person. Rather than leading a new era of domination at Dortmund, Tuchel was dismissed after two years. And then, Paris: Neymar, Mbappé, Cavani and co. With these stars, Tuchel managed to defeat Dortmund right at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic on the last game before the suspension of the Champions League: following a 2–1 away defeat in Dortmund, PSG won 2–0 the return leg at the Parc des Princes on 11 March 2020. In this ghost match played behind closed doors, Tuchel also put to rest any evil spirits from his troubled time at Dortmund.
4When it comes to coaching, Tuchel is as unyielding as he was when he was at Mainz and Dortmund, even when leading star-studded squads at PSG and Chelsea. His approach is still the same as it was in the days when he was unexpectedly promoted from youth coach to head of the first team at Mainz in August 2009: in the beginning it was all about the pass. At the start of his first session as manager of the Bundesliga club, Tuchel had his players line up opposite each other at precisely measured distances, three players on one side, three on the other – an exercise that would be too simple for youth coaches with ten-to twelve-year-olds. For a good twenty minutes, it was all about passing the ball cleanly to the opposite player and then moving, at a leisurely trot, to the opposite position. The players would call out the name of the person to whom they were passing the ball. Shouts of ‘Andy!’, ‘Tim!’, ‘Miro!’ or ‘Niko!’ sounded across the training ground at the Bruchwegstadion, punctuated by terse calls to ‘Sharpen up!’ again and again. Tuchel pedantically assessed the side-footed passes, voicing criticism if the ball was played imprecisely or not firmly enough.
Thomas Tuchel’s very first minutes as a professional manager in 2009 set the tone for a career that would catapult the then 35-year-old, who had previously spent a decade working in youth football, to the top of European football within a few years. Tuchel has changed himself and his playing philosophy and has constantly developed his way of working. But in many ways, he has also become an enigma, because 5the more prominent he and the clubs he works for have become, the more he has withdrawn from the public eye.
At Mainz, he regularly engaged in dialogue with journalists in weekly background discussions – casually referred to as ‘Tuchel rounds’ – in which the young coach would often allow astonishing insight into his way of thinking when it came to football. When confronted with questions about his profession, Tuchel would gush with almost religious zeal: it was clear that he wanted to deliver his views about football to the world. Incidentally, Tuchel would continue to do this later, on the big stage, in fluent French or English whenever he noticed that the reporters present were showing serious professional interest in his footballing philosophy.
When he found that he was being unfairly or misleadingly portrayed in the press, he would be deeply offended. However, Bundesliga coaches are rarely followed by journalists seeking to understand their tactical approach in the same way that Tuchel was. The authors of this book are two of barely a handful of regular attendees of these Tuchel rounds. We want to explain Thomas Tuchel by looking at his roots at the Bruchwegstadion. At Mainz, he was already developing the approach to team management that would lead to later problems, especially in Dortmund. He would sometimes become impatient and irascible; unyielding and resentful.
The traumatic experience of the bomb attack on the Dortmund team bus before the Champions League match against AS Monaco in April 2017 overshadowed Tuchel’s 6time at the club. The events and disagreements surrounding the attack and the rescheduling of the match for the following day led to the final falling out between Tuchel and the club’s management.
Tuchel’s personality, which has become the subject of a lot of news coverage, especially at the end of his time at Borussia Dortmund due to the circumstances surrounding his dismissal by the club, provides clues as to how one of the greatest coaching talents can sometimes be his own worst enemy. He is uncompromising in his dealings with his superiors and expects everyone in his working environment to share his own level of obsession. There is evidence that he turned the stars at PSG against him with his manner; be it Neymar acting up or Kylian Mbappé refusing to make eye contact with him after being substituted.
But all these experiences have allowed Thomas Tuchel to mature. At Chelsea, he has appeared, from day one, to possess the serenity and charisma of a top coach. In the beginning it was all about the pass, and the highlight, so far, is winning the Champions League in May 2021. But Thomas Tuchel wouldn’t be Thomas Tuchel if, at the moment of his greatest triumph, he wasn’t already looking ahead. ‘Now is the time to celebrate and to enjoy it and let it sink in,’ he said after lifting the trophy in Porto, ‘but then we move on. And that’s a good thing because nobody wants to rest. I don’t want to rest. I want the next one. I want the next success and I want the next title.’ One Step Beyond.
CHAPTER ONE
SUDDENLY, THERE’S THE BUNDESLIGA
FROM YOUTH COACH TO HEAD COACH
Sunday 2 August 2009. Thomas Tuchel is on the team bus with his U19s, returning from their training camp in Obsteig, Tirol. Unusually, Tuchel is not thinking about the team’s training sessions. Rather, he’s looking forward to seeing his wife, Sissi, and especially their little daughter, Emma. Two weeks ago, Tuchel became a father for the first time. It was the culmination of an exhilarating summer, during which the manager has succeeded on all fronts. He has just won the German championship title with the Mainz 05 U19s. Then came the birth of his first child during the summer break. It couldn’t be more fitting for the family of a football coach. That he had to depart for the training camp a few days after Emma’s birth was the only downside, as it meant that the then 35-year-old was unable to see his young family for a week. A few more hours on the bus, then two 8days off are planned for his team – and, above all, for him and his family.
Volker Kersting, in the seat next to Tuchel on the bus, knows that his colleague’s plans are long overdue at this point. The head of Mainz’s youth development centre has just received a text message from Christian Heidel: ‘It’s time.’ Kersting doesn’t have to think about what the Mainz sporting director wants to tell him. ‘I could see the writing on the wall immediately,’ Kersting recalls. Shortly before the bus arrives in Mainz, Heidel also contacts Tuchel. The director asks the manager for a confidential meeting, stressing that the squad should not become aware of the situation. After the bus has reached Mainz, Kersting accompanies Tuchel to his Wiesbaden flat so that he can see his family. The two men have a little chat about the new development.
Two days before, a newly promoted Mainz lost in the first round of the DFB-Pokal. As had happened before in the club’s history, Mainz were the victims of a lower-league opponent. For Jörn Andersen, the 2–1 loss after extra time to Regionalliga side VfB Lübeck would be his last game as coach. Worse than the first-round defeat, however, was the bad mood among the team, despite the fact that Andersen had led Mainz back into the Bundesliga that summer. Before the Lübeck game, internal matters had been made public via Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). There, players anonymously reported serious changes in their coach’s character. Apparently, Andersen had suddenly begun to behave 9like a general both on and off the pitch. He had deliberately distanced himself from the players, letting assistant coach Jürgen Kramny do most of the training work, while he himself acted as a critical observer. In the dressing room, he had the players’ lockers cleared of photos of the great moments of their careers or pictures of their children during the summer break. Andersen justified such measures with his conviction that ‘a player can only perform if he keeps order’. His new credo was that a promoted team could only be prepared for the fight against relegation through toughness on the part of the coach. The then 46-year-old Norwegian, who was once the Bundesliga top scorer at Eintracht Frankfurt, had let the club know during preseason that he wanted to rebrand his coaching personality. He believed he had to be more like Felix Magath, who was known for his hard physical training.
Sporting director Heidel was already deeply concerned by this attitude during the team’s training camp. He tried to appeal to Andersen, who instead provoked further trouble by turning up late for a reception hosted by the mayor of Flachau, a village in the mountains close to Salzburg, as he was playing golf. This incident was also leaked to the public. The club had lost confidence in Andersen. And so, for the first time in Bundesliga history, a promotion coach was suspended just five days before his first top-tier match. Andersen could have saved himself the trip to observe Hannover 96 at Eintracht Trier in the DFB-Pokal, accompanied by assistant Kramny. His fate was already 10decided on that late Sunday afternoon, but Heidel still had to convince Andersen’s successor to step up.
Tuchel drove back to the Bruchwegstadion late in the evening to talk to Heidel, who explained that he was banking on him. But the would-be youngest Bundesliga coach of the new season hesitated. ‘Thomas even asked for a week or two to think about it,’ Heidel recalls. ‘That’s when I had to make it clear to him that the football business isn’t all that simple, and certainly not in our situation as a newly promoted club five days before the start of the Bundesliga season. I told him this might be a unique opportunity.’ Tuchel took the job. Mainz 05 had a new coach. Heidel released Andersen from his duties later that morning and Tuchel’s appointment was announced to the press. At the time, Andersen apparently assumed that Heidel had wanted to discuss an early contract extension with him, the promotion coach, before the start of the season. Instead, he was sacked and Tuchel was given a two-year contract.
And so, just after 1.30 p.m., Thomas Tuchel sits on the podium in Mainz’s small but packed press room. He’s visibly nervous and seemingly impressed by the flurry of camera flashes greeting him. ‘I started to sweat. It was a different world,’ Tuchel admitted later. But his statements are clear and to the point.
‘I’m approaching the task with respect but without fear. At the moment, this is a dream I’m living,’ he says. ‘From the first day at Mainz 05, I felt backing and appreciation for 11me and my work. I took it to mean that one day I could perhaps make it onto the list of candidates for the first team. Of course, I wouldn’t have thought that it would happen so quickly.’ Tuchel declares that he prefers a style typical of Mainz, with high press and switching play: ‘Coming up to Bruchweg and having to play Mainz for ninety minutes needs to be a punishment for the opposition again.’
Tuchel’s appointment as head coach was preceded a few months earlier by intensive talks with Heidel. Tuchel had asked the Mainz director to terminate his contract in the spring as he wanted to accept an offer from TSG Hoffenheim to manage their U23s. The offer, which was financially much more lucrative, had been made by Hoffenheim head coach Ralf Rangnick, once Tuchel’s manager at SSV Ulm and his mentor when he started his coaching career – Rangnick had made a 27-year-old Tuchel assistant coach of the Stuttgart U15s. Tuchel explained to Heidel that he wanted to become a good coach and that he wanted to acquire the necessary skills in Hoffenheim. Heidel flatly rejected Tuchel’s request for release and explained this to him in a long email. ‘I wrote a legendary sentence saying I was of the opinion that he had long since reached the point where he no longer needed to learn, that he was already capable of teaching,’ recalls Heidel, who, in retrospect, smiles at his uncharacteristically stilted choice of words. ‘I also promised him I would keep him in mind if something happened around our management position.’
12Tuchel then wrote back that he thought the assurance was great, but that it wasn’t about that at all. He just wanted to become a good coach. He accepted the decision, saying everything was OK now, that he didn’t even want the offer from Hoffenheim any more, that he was back at Mainz body and soul and that he was thankful for their trust.
Tuchel could have almost doubled his Mainz salary at Hoffenheim. ‘But Thomas wasn’t in it for the money. For him, Hoffenheim was the incentive because he was convinced that he could get even more out of it for his development. The conditions there – with academic work, a large coaching staff and Ralf Rangnick as a mastermind – were tempting for him,’ says Kersting, who had guided Tuchel to Bruchweg nine months before, after the previous U19s coach Kramny had been promoted to assistant manager of the first team.
The head of Mainz’s academy knew Tuchel from numerous encounters in previous years. ‘At first, I was rather unaware of him as Hansi Kleitsch’s assistant manager and later as the U15s coach at Stuttgart. I then took notice of him when he became head of the academy at Augsburg, where he also coached the U23s,’ says Kersting. ‘At the conference for the heads of the nationwide academies, he stood out because what he had to say was interesting. Thomas always thought a little outside the box. From speaking with him, I realised how deeply he had delved into the subject. I then observed more closely the way he had FC Augsburg’s U19s 13playing and then had him in mind when Jürgen Kramny was promoted to the first team.’ Kersting called Tuchel, who was immediately interested: ‘In Mainz, we were much further along than Augsburg at that time. There, in addition to all the other stuff, he was also in charge of making sure the balls were inflated.’
Right from the start, Kersting was sure that Tuchel was the best possible candidate as coach for Mainz’s U23s. All he had to do was convince Stefan Hofmann, with whom Kersting ran the academy. The club’s current chairman had a part-time job at Mainz at the time – in addition to a job in the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Science – and as the holder of a German Football Association (DFB) coaching badge, his word carried weight when it came to filling the post. ‘I suggested we should have a meeting with Thomas Tuchel,’ says Kersting. ‘I knew I couldn’t tell Stefan that Thomas was a perfect fit, because he might have rejected him outright otherwise.’ So, the two men made their way to Stuttgart’s SI-Centrum, an entertainment venue complete with a theatre, a casino, a cinema and cafés, where people meet for talks of precisely this kind. Tuchel was incredibly well prepared and won them both over immediately. He was already making suggestions about where he might start developing things at Mainz.
‘After a short time, when Thomas and Stefan were talking between themselves about the coaching course and other things, I leaned back. That’s when I knew it was 14going to work out,’ says Kersting. After getting into their car, Hofmann gave his mate Kersting a friendly smack on the shoulder. ‘You scumbag, you knew beforehand he was just the guy.’ The two colleagues were in high spirits. Rarely before had they agreed about a personnel decision to such an extent. Tuchel’s visit to Mainz, where the contents of the contract were discussed and during which he took a close look at the training facility, became a mere formality. The coach was excited about the new job as he no longer saw any development opportunities for himself at Augsburg. He was under-appreciated at the club where he had matured as a youth coach. That’s why Tuchel, regardless of not having a new job confirmed, had previously announced his departure from FC Augsburg. In later years, during encounters in the Bundesliga, he would meet his former club with a sense of distance. It looked as if there was no special bond that remained from the time he spent at the Rosenaustadion.
At Mainz, Tuchel hit the ground running. ‘From the very first training session, there was a fire I had never experienced before. The lads were so eager to get going that they didn’t want to leave the training ground,’ recalls Volker Kersting. ‘During the first training camp, we had to stop the afternoon sessions after more than four hours – it was getting dark.’ The young Mainz players sensed from the start that the new coach was making them better day by day. Tuchel impressed them with his unconditional focus. ‘He was only living for his mission during this time. Many other coaches 15in the youth sector only look at the next step and think about how to take that,’ says Kersting. ‘Thomas works with great composure in the moment, trusting that everything else will fall into place eventually.’ Tuchel explained that he was told about this approach by a hockey coach during an interview with German newspaper FAZ: ‘An English coach who is the sports director of the Indian federation once told me: “If you are an U17s coach, you actually want to coach the U19s. If you are an assistant manager, you want to be the boss. That’s a mistake!” There’s something to that. If you’re passionate about your job and free of vanity, you’ll improve your quality. And eventually, that’s going to get noticed. My promotion was only possible because I never wanted it compulsively. I gave everything to the U19s and told myself that I can’t influence everything else anyway.’
Tuchel thrived at his new role at Mainz. The player Jan Kirchhoff, who went on to work with Tuchel for five years, starting out in the U19s, can no longer remember details of Tuchel’s first weeks, but he does remember how the coach won everyone over. ‘We became an amazingly tight-knit bunch incredibly quickly because it was just fun to work very hard together,’ says Kirchhoff. And the manager did his part with special ideas. At the training camp, he spontaneously asked Kersting if he had the budget to rent the team some mountain bikes for a cycling tour. The whole squad then rode up to the Simmering Alm inn, where they had helpings of kässpatzen, with a beautiful view of the valley. Later, on 16the summit of the Simmering, at an altitude of 2,096 metres, Tuchel gave one of those speeches. He said that his goal was for the team to reach a final. The team were thinking of the German U19s cup final, which could be reached with only three victories. During the speech, the coach also revealed a little gesture that would take on significance later in the season. ‘Thomas asked me if I had anything on me with symbolic value that could be buried as treasure,’ Kersting recalls. ‘I had a Mainz pin in my pocket. We wrapped it in a Snickers wrapper and buried it in a distinctive place. I can still see it right in front of me today.’ After they had made it to the final, Tuchel told his team, they would all go back up the mountain and dig out the treasure.
THE TEAM CONFRONT THEIR MANAGER
Mainz didn’t win all their games straight away. The season began with a defeat to Hoffenheim after a goal was conceded in injury time. Tuchel was disappointed but tried to spread optimism among the team. He convinced the lads that his way was the right way, even if they did not get results at first. After a series of victories in the autumn, which put the side in second place behind top-of-the-league Freiburg and their coach Christian Streich, the DFB-Pokal dream also came to an end: Mainz lost 5–3 to Borussia Dortmund in the round 17of sixteen. It seemed as if the treasure on the Simmering would never be dug up.
At the time of the cup defeat, Tuchel’s lads also lost in the league to direct pursuers Bayern Munich and VfB Stuttgart. Mainz’s U19s were in crisis and then the side lost their best man. German international André Schürrle, Mainz’s future first world champion player, was ruled out for several weeks. Second place in the table, which would have entitled the team to participate in the final round of the German championship, was all but lost. For the first time, morale was low, but the leopard Tuchel couldn’t change his spots: his tone in training started to become even harsher and more direct than it was before. The young players became rattled and felt that they were being treated unfairly. So, Jan Kirchhoff and André Schürrle took matters into their own hands and approached Tuchel. ‘We told him we wanted to be treated differently. We didn’t lose on purpose, just that things hadn’t gone so well for a few weeks,’ Kirchhoff recalled later, when he and Schürrle were asked by journalists about their experiences with Tuchel after his appointment. The two internationals were the only U19s who later followed the manager directly to the first team. Tuchel listened to the players’ complaints. He said that from that point on he would exercise restraint when criticising his young players. And this seemed to work. The team stabilised. They began to consistently play in a 4–2–3–1 formation and Tuchel refrained from making 18constant changes, as would later become a common tactic. In youth football, that would unsettle the players too much. At such a young age, talent needs certainty. Tuchel’s team started to be successful with the same moves over and over again. Their opponents could not discern any plans through video analysis – as they would later do with the first team.
Stefan Bell, Kirchhoff, Schürrle and co. won the last game before the 2008 winter break against top-of-the-league Freiburg. Manager Streich was as animated on the sidelines in this match as he would later be when managing the first team in the Bundesliga. Meetings with Tuchel had always been special for Streich. Off the pitch, the two would get along splendidly because they shared many ideas about football. But during those ninety minutes on matchday, there was almost a kind of state of war between them. ‘With Christian, it was always madness,’ says Volker Kersting. ‘We would hug each other before the game and say sincere goodbyes after, often along the lines of, “Congratulations on the victory, but really, we should have won.” But during the game, it would take him less than three minutes after kick-off to appear at our bench and insult us in the worst way. He and Thomas do have a special “romance”.’ Tuchel appreciated Streich as a manager to such an extent that, despite the robust encounters on the touchline, Tuchel had Streich contacted by Kersting after his appointment as head coach to ask if he wanted to become his assistant. The plan failed, probably to the good fortune of both in the end. Two alphas 19on one bench would not have gone down well, Kersting is convinced. Instead, Tuchel found his alter ego in Arno Michels, with whom he once attended coaching school, who would later become his assistant.
With the win against Freiburg, Mainz’s U19s returned to second place. The squad’s Christmas celebrations were saved. Tuchel’s prospects for 2009 were looking good and he could also look forward to the birth of his first child. In the spring, Tuchel’s side continued their winning streak and qualification for the semi-finals of the German championship was secured quite early on.
Meanwhile, change was brewing in Tuchel’s – usually tranquil – coaching life. TSG Hoffenheim had asked whether he would like to become the new U23s coach in Kraichgau. After just being promoted to the Bundesliga, the first team had thrilled the whole of German football with an exhilarating first half of the season and sat at the top of the league in the autumn and went on to challenge Bayern for the title over the rest of the season. Hoffenheim manager Ralf Rangnick suddenly became the trendsetter in German football once again, having caused a sensation as a coaching revolutionary a decade earlier when he led SSV Ulm into the Bundesliga and became head coach at Stuttgart. Rangnick gained a reputation for his technical approach and for talking on German TV about the importance of the back four and his form of counter-pressing. As a result, he became known as the ‘football professor’. Rangnick had struggled in 20the more traditional club management systems at Hanover and Schalke, but at Hoffenheim he was given more freedom to experiment. He was allowed to fill coaching posts as he saw fit and he identified Tuchel as the man to manage his U23s. Rangnick had known Tuchel as a player at SSV Ulm, until the latter was forced to end his career as a result of a knee injury. Later, he helped Tuchel start in youth coaching at Stuttgart. At Hoffenheim, Rangnick saw an opportunity to reunite the two coaches. ‘Thomas could have earned more at Hoffenheim, but that was not his incentive at the time. Rather, he saw the opportunities he had there. At Hoffenheim, they had a scientific approach – special coaches for fitness and the like. Thomas believed he could’ve added something to his development there,’ says Kersting.
Sporting director Heidel, however, unequivocally refused to release Tuchel. ‘I had had Thomas on my radar for some time then, also as a future man for our first team,’ says Heidel. ‘Our head of academy [Kersting] had only brought him from Augsburg the previous summer and told me after just a few weeks of preparation for the season that we had found an outstanding coaching talent there. I then convinced myself of that with my own eyes. At that time, we had no idea we might be parting with Jörn Andersen soon. We were doing well in the 2. Bundesliga. My thoughts regarding Thomas were more of a fundamental nature,’ explains Heidel. Tuchel threw himself back into his work. His companion Kersting also made it unmistakably clear to him 21that his path would lead him to the Bundesliga in the not too distant future. As a thank you for this encouragement, after being named Manager of the Season for the first time, Tuchel gave him a gift of a photo, on which a note was written in felt-tip pen: ‘You were the first to believe. Thank you. Your friend Thomas.’ Today, the picture leans on the edge of the sofa behind the seating area in Kersting’s office.
Winning the German U19s championship was the reward for Tuchel embracing his situation. His team beat Borussia Dortmund 2–1 in the final game. Eugen Gopko scored the opener and Dortmund’s equaliser came from one Mario Götze, who was up against André Schürrle in this match, a man who would become his future friend and who would later provide the assist for his World Cup-winning goal in 2014. In the sixty-eighth minute, Robin Mertinitz scored the winner with a shot from 25 metres out. In the stands, more than 10,000 Mainz fans were thrilled by the first real championship title for the club, who until then had only the German amateur title from 1982 on their letterhead. The experts quickly recognised that one coach in particular had excelled himself. Among them was Jürgen Klopp, who was watching the match from a box, together with his friend Christian Heidel. Klopp, who had left Mainz just under a year earlier, after eleven and a half years as a player and seven and a half as a coach, was recuperating in his Mainz home during the summer break after his first season as coach of Borussia Dortmund. For him, the match provided 22the opportunity to watch Dortmund’s junior players, who were stronger than ever. Mario Götze was considered an exceptional talent who would find his way to the top. Then there was Turkish youth international Tolgay Arslan, as well as other German players such as Daniel Ginczek and Marc Hornschuh. They were among the leading talents of the group. ‘Today, the better team won against a team with ten better players,’ Klopp told Heidel after the final whistle. ‘Klopp’s words were the greatest possible praise for Tuchel,’ says Heidel. In addition to World Cup winner Schürrle and Bundesliga veterans Kirchhoff and Bell, another five players from Mainz’s champion team later played as professional footballers after making their way up from the third tier. The academy at Bruchweg had never achieved such a success rate before.
The success had a symbolic resonance, too: during the return bus journey from the semi-final victory in Bremen on the previous Sunday, Tuchel spoke to Kersting shortly after departure. ‘He just said “Volker”, and I already knew what was coming,’ Kersting recalls. ‘I’d been dreading it. He really wanted to go up that mountain and dig out that pin.’ But with only one week to prepare for the final, Tuchel didn’t want to subject the team to the trip. So, on Wednesday after training, he drove to Obsteig on a covert mission with Kersting and Norman Bertsch, who was assistant manager. In the evening, the treasure hunters sat down with the hotel owner, who agreed to join the expedition the next morning. With 23the rising sun, the troop set off. Tuchel had the excavation filmed. On the way home, Tuchel, Kersting and Bertsch got caught in a traffic jam and the training session for Mainz’s U19s was postponed by an hour under the cover of a flimsy excuse. The mission had to remain secret as Tuchel wanted to send his team out onto the pitch on the day of the final with special momentum.
While the squad were warming up on the pitch on the day of the match, a projector and a screen were being set up in the dressing room. On a table in the middle was a cloche. Hidden underneath was the pin. Tuchel’s final address to his team was short, and then he switched off the lights and the video started. About thirty seconds in, on-screen Tuchel held the pin up to the camera and said, ‘Here is our treasure! We have kept our promise! We have retrieved the pin for you! And now we’re fulfilling our dream of the title!’ Reallife Tuchel then raised the cloche and told his team that this final was the ascent to the next summit where another treasure would be hidden: the championship trophy. ‘At that moment, the boys in the dressing room were so pumped. You can’t even describe it. There was a buzz in the dressing room. They were fully involved, they were ready. I remember the eyes I looked into. They could have beaten any opponent,’ Kersting remembers. But then the door opened, and the team got the news that Heidel had postponed the kick-off by fifteen minutes due to the large crowd. ‘I just thought, “No way is that true.” That was really the only moment in 24my life when I could have shot Christian Heidel,’ laughs Kersting.
Tuchel, too, was speechless for a moment. Then he collected himself, allowed the team to relax for a moment and gave them one more encouragement before they finally took to the pitch. However, the players seemed a little paralysed at the start of the game. They seemed over-awed by their superior opponents. Nonetheless, 28 June 2009 became the first big day of celebration in Tuchel’s career as a coach. The success eclipsed the championship titles to which he had contributed as assistant at Stuttgart. On that day, an underdog team won against a top team thanks to their coach’s exceptional match plan. After the game, Tuchel received the soaking that is customary at championship celebrations. Jan Kirchhoff was among those pouring buckets over the manager’s head. ‘And then we celebrated. We were a pretty cool squad, who developed an incredible team spirit thanks to Tuchel,’ says Kirchhoff. The club were also brimming with pride for the achievement of their youngsters. Heidel puts the championship title of the U19s ‘almost on a par with the Bundesliga promotion just five weeks earlier’. The board member responsible for the academy, Hubert Friedrich, father of Manuel Friedrich, who trained in Mainz a decade earlier and later played for the national team, highlighted the sporting achievement of this title, which had none of the commercial distractions or incentives associated with the rest of the game. ‘This championship is all the more beautiful 25for us because this youth title is a product of club work and not of transfer activity,’ and Mainz were still a long way from the usual remuneration of talents elsewhere, he explained: ‘We only travel reimburse travel expenses. Our premise is that the players come to us because of the quality of their training.’
This also applied to Tuchel. Even during the euphoria of the championship win, he did not let himself be diverted from his analytical focus. He was happy for his lads, but he also had the events of the game in his mind. Dortmund had dominated the first half but they had missed half a dozen great chances, while Mainz took the lead in the twenty-sixth minute with their first shot on goal through Gopko. After Mario Götze’s equaliser shortly before the break, they were still thankful to be in with a chance. ‘We sat in the dressing room at half-time and were grateful that we were still in the game,’ Tuchel admitted later. After the start of the second half, however, his team suddenly dominated the action and the victory, thanks to the goal of substitute Robin Mertinitz in the sixty-eighth minute, was deserved. With this success, Tuchel had shaken up the club: chief executive Michael Kammerer even had to commission new stationery.
‘Of course, we’ll add this championship title next to our only entry so far from the 1982 amateur championship,’ he announced. However, it was a good thing that the coach’s name did not feature on the letterhead, as the club would have to change it again soon because Tuchel’s promotion 26to head coach would happen much faster than expected – even for the coach himself. During his presentation after the victory, sporting director Heidel revealed in passing that, shortly before, Tuchel had also received an offer to become assistant manager of the German U21 national team under Rainer Adrion. But now, for the first time, the coach, who was being courted in professional circles, would be training a Bundesliga team. It was 4 August 2009, a Tuesday. In four days, Mainz 05 would be facing Bayer Leverkusen.
CHAPTER TWO
VICTORY OVER BAYERN WITH AL PACINO
MIND GAMES AND BREAKING THE RULES
Tuchel’s first training session was remarkably unspectacular. The observers, whether journalists or the five dozen or so spectators, which is quite a crowd by Mainz standards, were expecting a fireworks display of revolutionary exercises; the training session of a young manager who wants to prove himself. But Tuchel was much more courageous. He kept things simple. He arrived at the training ground unassumingly with a stopwatch and a whistle around his neck, and spoke briefly to his new team. Then, for what felt like half an eternity, the players passed balls back and forth across 7 or 8 metres, calling out their names to each other. The exercise was like an icebreaker exercise for a youth team. But it had a purpose.
28Among other things, Tuchel had identified two major deficits in his team. Firstly, their passing game was too lax for his liking – as a result, you could hear him shouting, ‘Sharper!’ over and over again in this session and the ones in the following weeks. Every pass must be played as accurately as possible, he demanded. And calling each other’s names was aimed to ensure that the team, who were silent under Tuchel’s predecessor, would rediscover communication. ‘I remember after training, many said he was doing schoolboy or youth training,’ says Christian Heidel. ‘But the team didn’t think that at all. Tuchel came across well, his speech was well received. He talked to the team for five minutes before training. He entered the dressing room a youth coach, and when the team came out, he was clearly head coach.’ From the very first moment, Tuchel had a charisma with which he won the team over.
The midfielder Andreas Ivanschitz agrees. ‘Those were exciting days,’ the former Mainz top earner recalls. A good three weeks earlier, the 25-year-old Austrian international was signed as an experienced star player. As a playmaker, he was supposed to become the heart of the Mainz team.
‘At first, Andersen’s dismissal was a shock for me. After all, he was the one who signed me, and part of the reason you decide to transfer are discussions with the coach, and his ideas. On top of that, this was a Bundesliga newcomer. There are certainly more pleasant situations to be in,’ says Ivanschitz. ‘But then Thomas Tuchel washed away all this fear, 29these concerns, with his first appearance. He came into the dressing room as a young coach and took away the doubts with his ease and charisma. He was beaming. He was ready, up for the job. You could just feel it. On the pitch everyone was convinced by him. The first hours in the dressing room and on the pitch were simply impressive. That immediately took away my insecurity.’
Tuchel discerned that his first appearance in front of his new team had been successful. He had an interview with FAZ
