Opinion
Against Thomas Tuchel
Bayern get a successful coach – who will fail for a reason in Munich
Thomas Tuchel keeps causing offense at his clubs – FC Bayern Munich won’t put up with that either
© Steven Paston / Imago Images
Thomas Tuchel may be the right coach for FC Bayern Munich. Meticulous, almost obsessed and successful. But he will not stay with the series champion for long either, which is more due to Tuchel than to Bayern.
Five years after the missed opportunity, it works on the second attempt: Thomas Tuchel takes a seat on the coaching bench at Bayern Munich. Tuchel was supposed to come to Säbener Straße as early as 2018, and the hesitancy of those responsible at Bayern meant that the 49-year-old decided to go to Paris St. Germain. Missed chance, Niko Kovac came instead of Tuchel and had to vacate the place after 16 months.
There is no question that Tuchel has the qualities that put Bayern back on the road to success that they have not even left so far. One point behind Borussia Dortmund in the Bundesliga, still represented in the cup and the Champions League – Bayern still has a possible treble, albeit a difficult one.
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Tuchel is considered a meticulous coach who is almost obsessed with tactics and adapts his teams perfectly to their opponents. Cup victory with Dortmund, two championships and a cup win in France, Champions League winner and club world champion with Chelsea – wherever the native Bavarian goes, he is successful. He’s also popular with his players, with goalkeeper legend Gianluigi Buffon recently declaring that he’s met few people who are that intelligent. Superstar Kylian Mbappé also once thanked Tuchel for his work and success in Paris.
Thomas Tuchel offends and has to leave the clubs early
But success is only one side of the coin. On the other hand, there is a coach who regularly quarrels with the management of his clubs. Three days after triumphing in the DFB Cup, Borussia Dortmund parted ways with Tuchel in 2017. The trainer and managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke had already had a quarrel before. In an open letter to the fans shortly after the break-up, Watzke gave a deep glimpse of how the tie between the management and the trainer was cut. Accordingly, it was not just about results, “it’s always about basic values such as trust, respect, teamwork and communication skills, about authenticity and identification. It’s about reliability and loyalty,” wrote the BVB boss.
At his next station in Paris, Tuchel also got into a dispute with the sporting management. The coach was dissatisfied with the lack of newcomers and vented his anger publicly. “I’m worried that we will otherwise pay the price in October, November, December and January,” explained Tuchel in October 2020 in Kicker and warned that without reinforcements you no longer need to talk about the goals of the season. Sports director Leonardo in particular did not like the scolding, two months later the separation from Tuchel followed – immediately after a 4-0 win and still in the dressing room. The fact that Tuchel won several titles in his two years in Paris and even led the club to the final of the Champions League (which has not succeeded to this day) no longer played a role.
A world-class coach for the German Primus. My colleague Phil Göbel thinks that Tuchel is exactly the right man for FC Bayern Munich. Read why here:
Two years later, the successful coach lost his job in London. In January 2021, as the successor to Frank Lampard, he led the troubled Chelsea to the Champions League title in the same year. But with the new owner Todd Boehly, the success was quickly forgotten. After the separation last autumn, Boehly praised Tuchel as a talented and successful coach, but also explained that the club’s vision was “to find a coach who really wants to work with us”. Tuchel has to be counted among the best coaches in Europe, but his obviously difficult character stands in the way of long-term commitments.
So now FC Bayern Munich, the flagship of German football, which hopes to tie in with Tuchel again to not very long ago successes. If Tuchel manages to reach the team better than his predecessor Julian Nagelsmann, Bayern will also achieve short-term success. It is doubtful whether this will also be the case in the long term. With Oliver Kahn, there is an alpha player on the Bayern board and will not put up with much criticism, and sports director Hasan Salihamidžić will also want to have a say in new signings. Kahn and Salihamidžić provide the vision of how Bayern will develop.
Will Tuchel submit to a sporting management that has just demonstrated strength with the dismissal of Julian Nagelsmann? Will Tuchel identify with the club and the visions? That’s not unlikely. However, it is more likely that the Tuchel chapter will be closed again at Bayern in the not too distant future and will join the multitude of recently very short coaching careers in Munich. FC Bayern will have to ask themselves whether the success is really worth it.