MUNICH – Welcomed with fanfare by Chelsea but then sacked just 19 months later in September 2022, Thomas Tuchel, who is returning to Germany as Bayern Munich’s new coach, is one of Europe’s most sought-after managers but is not without controversy.
The 49-year-old German has a reputation as a brilliant tactician who is not afraid to overhaul his side constantly.
But he also has a streak of sackings behind him – with a bad-tempered exit at Borussia Dortmund in 2017 followed by an acrimonious parting from Paris Saint-Germain in December 2020, and most recently a tumultous departure from Chelsea.
Yet his turbulent CV has also shown that he has the capacity to bounce back to lead subsequent top-flight clubs.
The announcement on Friday that he is taking over the reins at Bayern – Germany’s most successful club – from Julian Nagelsmann on a two-year deal is yet another testimony to his employability.
On the field, the verdict so far is unanimous – every club that Tuchel has handled has obtained results and play attractive football, which was why Bayern had targeted him as their priority.
“After the World Cup we were playing less successful and less attractive football, and the ups and downs in our form put our season goals, and beyond, at risk,” Bayern chief executive Oliver Kahn said, with the 10-time consecutive German champions currently second in the league and a point behind rivals Dortmund.
“We came to the conclusion that the quality of our squad was less and less visible despite winning the league last season. That is why we reacted now.”
That is not to say that Nagelsmann, 35, has done a bad job. Bayern have won all eight of their Champions League matches this season and are in the quarter-finals, where they will face Manchester City in April.
But Tuchel is far more experienced. He had led Chelsea to Champions League glory, won two French titles with PSG and lifted the German Cup with Dortmund.
At once charismatic and prickly, Tuchel, by his own admission, can be a challenging personality.
“I wasn’t easy to deal with as a player,” he admitted in a 2009 interview.
A knee injury cut short his playing career as a defender at third-division Ulm in 1998 and he turned his hand to coaching.
He cut his coaching teeth in the youth academies at Stuttgart and Augsburg but his career took off at Mainz, where he was promoted from Under-19s boss to first-team head coach, two days before the start of the 2009-2010 season despite having no Bundesliga experience.
Like his role model, City manager Pep Guardiola, Tuchel is not afraid to switch formation or tactics two or three times during a game, making it impossible for opposing coaches to second-guess him.
He is also not shy about picking fights with club management.
After a pipe bomb attack that rocked Dortmund’s team bus ahead of a Champions League quarter-final against Monaco in 2017, Tuchel lashed out at the club’s bosses for agreeing to play the game a day later rather than give players more time to recover from the shock.
At Qatar-owned PSG, the central issue for him was his relationship with sporting director Leonardo. The German did not see eye-to-eye with the former Brazil star, who was eager to bring in his own man.
Tuchel was eventually pushed out, despite having won the Ligue 1 title in his first season and securing a clean sweep of domestic honours in 2019-20 before reaching the Champions League final in Lisbon, where PSG lost 1-0 to Bayern.
Given his record, his relationship with Bayern’s sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic and the outspoken former Germany goalkeeper Kahn will be closely scrutinised.
After all, it was also Salihamidzic and Hansi Flick’s tense relationship that eventually led the former coach to leave Bayern to become Germany’s national coach in the summer of 2021. AFP, REUTERS
