Mind video games: Two intellectuals and chess on a soccer pitch

Before leaving Bayern Munich, Pep Guardiola was requested about his potential successor. Without any hesitation, he shot out: “Thomas, you have to bring him to Bayern,” he informed the membership’s administration. By the time they met Thomas — Thomas Tuchel, that’s, the Chelsea supervisor he would encounter within the Champions League ultimate — he had already dedicated to Borussia Dortmund. But it confirmed how a lot Guardiola rated the German supervisor.
Theirs is a bond cast not a lot on the sector because it was on dinner tables at bars in Munich and Mainz, hours discussing soccer and soccer philosophies and dissecting ways and formations, deep into the evening, utilizing salt and pepper mills like pawns on a chessboard. To quote the largely passive onlooker Michael Reschke – who has had a protracted profession in soccer administration and administration himself – who recounted considered one of their conferences to athletic.com: “It was like watching two grandmasters of chess, Fischer vs Spassky, locked in a battle of wits. Or Cicero and Socrates, discussing football philosophy.”
It provides an thought of the change between two nice footballing intellectuals of this period, at contrasting spectrums of the footballing scale. A adorned player-manager and a failed-player-turned-bartender-turned-manager nonetheless reducing his tooth on the highest stage.
Tuchel idolises Guardiola. In his early teaching days – he began out in his late 20s after an harm stalled his profession – Tuchel used to save lots of his cash and fly to Barcelona to look at Guardiola marvel the world with butterfly soccer. He additionally learn and reread all of Guardiola’s biographies or any insightful piece into the Catalan’s ways and thought patterns. Guardiola, then again, admired Tuchel’s bravado and steadfastness to an attacking philosophy throughout Bayern’s thrashing of Mainz in a Bundesliga match. “This is an interesting young coach. He has an idea,” Guardiola spoke glowingly of Tuchel.
Adherence to rules
Their ideologies aren’t the identical — Tuchel by no means tried to merely copy Guardiola — however their unflinching faithfulness to their beliefs is analogous. Two deep and intense thinkers of the sport, each are wedded to the ultra-fine particulars of the sport. If Guardiola desires the grass at Etihad to be trimmed to a particular peak, Tuchel makes lots of of tactical diagrams and formation graphs earlier than each sport. Even earlier than he assumed cost of Chelsea, he had studied their video games and knew the minutest element about each participant within the squad. He knew what technique or formation would work and what wouldn’t at Chelsea somewhat than studying on the go.
Both are tactical modernists, nearly uber-nerds, able to remodeling a membership with as a lot their tactical freshness as their man-management expertise. In simply 5 months, Tuchel has reworked a bedraggled facet right into a aggressive agency. The listing of gamers whose profession he has revived is lengthy. N’golo Kante had appeared misplaced since Maurizio Sarri repositioned him to a extra attacking function, however Tuchel re-employed him again to his holding function, the place he’s once more thriving. Likewise, Antonio Rudiger is a revitalised presence on the again whereas the vaunted German pair of Timo Werner and Kai Havertz has begun to show the world-beating kind they had been touted to deliver.
Tuchel not a copycat
The German isn’t as fixated with possession as Guardiola is. Rather, the stamp of his groups is their speedy transition from defence to assault, a typical German trait. In huge video games, he’s usually comfortable with out possession (although his groups seldom sit too deep), however would press and counterattack with relish. The second legs of the ties towards Madrid groups — Real and Atletico — had been traditional Tuchel. He made tight traces, congesting house, working onerous, urgent relentlessly and bottlenecking them earlier than launching blistering forays like most German groups or groups coached by Germans would. This may typically result in lengthy phases of sterile soccer, nevertheless it’s removed from dour or defensive soccer. Guardiola is extra of a romantic, somebody not a lot bothered about getting the job accomplished, as about how it’s achieved. Not for him the tedium of smash-and-grab manoeuvres. He will get his kick from strategic outmanoeuvring.
The ultimate blueprint
The Champions League ultimate could be like a sport of classical chess between two grandmasters, every transfer well-weighted and supremely crafted. A duel that might slow-burn and be determined by on-the-feet tactical ingenuity or a second of pure genius. Tuchel has shocked Guardiola within the FA Cup semifinal in addition to a freewheeling league sport by exploiting the house left by City’s marauding full-backs, particularly Joao Cancelo, and Guardiola could be cautious of this menace. Tuchel too could be cautious of this wariness of Guardiola. His perception and instinct. A tactical masterclass awaits, as could be a desk in some nook of a bar in Porto for his or her soccer meditations.