Even if the magician David Redfearn immediately deleted the photo of a Chelsea FC team dinner published on his Instagram account the previous week, it could no longer be removed from the world. Too many fans of the Londoners had already seen the picture and duplicated it on social media. The motif was quite a rarity: in the snapshot, which was probably not intended for the public, Redfearn – booked for this event to perform his sleight of hand – posed next to the otherwise hardly visible club director Marina Granvovskaia and coach Thomas Tuchel. In a remarkably good mood, Tuchel held a heart playing card in front of the camera, behind which club employees could be seen. The event was a thank you to the employees for their hard work.
“What an honor!” to give a performance to Chelsea, wrote Redfearn, with the hashtag: #magicians. For the Chelsea fans, the magician in the picture wasn’t Redfearn, but Tuchel, who, as if by magic, fundamentally changed the club within a year.
After the dismissal of club legend Frank Lampard, in January 2021, Tuchel took over the Chelsea team, which was already highly talented but haphazardly drifted into mid-table. With a few clever tricks, including switching to a three-man defense, Tuchel led the team directly to the Champions League title. With their second triumph in the premier class after 2012, Chelsea are now the only club to have won all relevant international trophies at least twice.
As a reward for the unexpected success, the board of directors, on the instructions of club owner Roman Abramowitsch, extended the coach’s contract until 2024 – with significantly improved salaries. Tuchel, 48, seems to be tailor-made for the sometimes cool but stringent working culture at Chelsea, because the club leaders around Granovskaia and sports director Petr Cech do not intervene in the coach’s field of activity. Success and failure is therefore always tied to the coach himself, with which Tuchel has come to terms quite well so far.
To crown his time on the island, Tuchel could now become club world champions with Chelsea this week. At the mini-tournament of the continental winners, which will take place again in the old format in the United Arab Emirates despite larger Fifa World Cup plans, the Londoners will meet Asian winner Al-Hilal from Saudi Arabia in the semifinals on Wednesday (5:30 p.m.). However, Tuchel will miss this game due to a corona infection, he was already missing in Chelsea’s tough FA Cup win against third division Plymouth (2-1) on Saturday.
Tuchel managed to change the mood with a tactical experiment
After all, the involuntary quarantine gives Tuchel additional days of rest after admitting surprisingly candidly in January that the demanding game timing in England had made him and his team, weakened by many failures, “tired”. In view of the fact that the games were mostly dominant, the impression was temporarily given that Tuchel needed a break more than his players.
With the additional boost of a remarkably confident first third of the season during the Christmas period, the sometimes over-ambitious German coach had obviously bitten into the idea of dethroning Manchester City in the Premier League – the permanent first coached by Pep Guardiola (three championships in four years ). After a number of avoidable point losses, it soon looked as if Chelsea would be overtaken by Manchester City. But instead of accepting this doldrums in earnings as an unavoidable slack (after a month-long high), Tuchel apparently felt personally attacked by the poor results – and briefly lost control.
In interviews, the charm of the quite humorous coach sometimes changed into a dangerously grumpy tone, with which he always tried to justify himself over the turn of the year without anyone attacking him at all. In addition, Tuchel seemed to put off substitute players because – unlike what he was used to – he only relied on the same regulars. Sometimes the coach reprimanded the league (for dealing with Corona), sometimes the referees (for wrong whistles), sometimes his record transfer Romelu Lukaku (for a clumsy interview and missed goal chances) – or he lamented bad luck with injuries. The sporting result was: only third place in the league, meanwhile ten points behind City (with one game more).
In contrast to his similarly impulsive coaching colleague Jürgen Klopp, who sometimes vents his anger just as angrily, Tuchel does not have Klopp’s enviable gift of letting dissatisfaction go away with a good punch line. Instead, Tuchel found a way out of the negative spiral with a daring change of tactics. Before the League Cup semi-final against city rivals Tottenham Hotspur, he had his team defended for the first time with a back four to compensate for the failures at the back. The prestige success over Spurs calmed the nervous club environment – and so did Tuchel, who then gave his professionals several days off.
Maintaining a respectful relationship with his players is more important to Tuchel than immediate success. Because compared to Guardiola (contract until 2023) and Klopp (contract until 2024), both of whom are probably closer to the end of their terms than the beginning, time is playing for Tuchel – if he can stay with the unstable Chelsea in the medium term. With this prospect he will have to console himself for the championship title that he probably missed this season. Unless David Redfearn comes to his aid – and conjures up Manchester City from the top of the table.