SHADOW PLAY
KLOPP AND TUCHEL TREADING SIMILAR PATHS IN SEARCH OF PREMIER LEAGUE GLORY
IF LIVERPOOL fans were told the manager of the 2021-22 Premier League champions will be a passionate German in a baseball cap who cut his coaching teeth at Mainz and Borussia Dortmund, you could forgive them for pumping the tyres on the open-top bus.
But Jurgen Klopp isn’t the only leading top-flight boss who matches that description.
Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel, like his counterpart at Liverpool, began his senior managerial career at Mainz and succeeded
Klopp at
Dortmund.
Like his compatriot he has led his current English employers to a
Champions League title and has designs on following that up by winning the Premier League.
And yet, for all the obvious similarities between these two German coaches, the differences are far from subtle.
Klopp, in the popular image, is affable, larger than life. All bear hugs, beer and cigarettes. The teams he produces are widely seen as an extension of their 54-year-old manager – passionate, in your face, always positive and on the front foot. Relentless, loud and unwilling to change.
Tuchel’s Chelsea, by contrast, conform to the more traditional English stereotype of German football; organised and efficient. Attacking but built to win first and entertain later.
On Sunday the two meet at Anfield, with braggiing rights, psychological scores and two fledgling 100 per cent records on the line in the Premier League. But beware the cliches.
Tuchel is more mad professor than laptop manager, famed for his radical methods – pitches without boundaries, centre-halves holding tennis balls, players constantly thrown off balance by exercises in problem solving and differential learning.
If Klopp is the charismatic leader of men who devoted players never fail to follow, Tuchel has described himself as a facilitator, eschewing personal popularity in favour of team improvement, making its preparation so thorough, complex and exhausting his players find the games themselves straightforward by comparison.
While the imposing Klopp might be more likely to stare down a Sean Dyche or Sam Allardyce on the touchline, it is Tuchel who has butted heads with his employers; driving some players to their wits’ ends at Mainz and leaving both Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain after a breakdown in relations with the technical staff above him.
Despite the friction behind the scenes, that Tuchel maintained positive
relationships with PSG’s star-studded squad for two-and-a-half years – leading them to a Champions League final as well as two league titles – is credit to his man-management skills.
Indeed, a manager once described as a ‘dictator’ who ‘bore personal grudges’, has more recently spoken about how ‘it’s more important to forget and move on from the greatest, most unexpected success you might have than to forget and move on from the failures’.
Chelsea’s Champions League success last May was certainly unexpected – coming just five months after Tuchel’s arrival at the club. And, if he remains as demanding as ever, the 47-year-old does appear to have mellowed – or at least learned to be more tolerant – towards those around him.
Chelsea’s pre-season trip to Ireland saw players on the losing side of training exercises made to perform Backstreet Boys dance routines, and Tuchel gained credit for instilling harmony and motivation among fringe players unlikely to figure in his plans this season.
While Tuchel spent the summer assessing and refining a bloated, unwieldy Chelsea squad, Klopp was focused on extending the stays of some key lieutenants, with Andy Robertson this week joining Trent AlexanderArnold, Fabinho, Alisson and Virgil Van Dijk in committing his future to the Merseyside club.
If contracts rather than new signings were the priority, Liverpool’s attempt to wrest the title back from Manchester City has at least been hugely strengthened by Van Dijk’s return from the serious knee injury which sidelined the imperious Netherlands defender for most of last season.
For all Tuchel’s unrelenting focus on teamwork and outsmarting the opposition, Chelsea’s own title prospects have been improved immeasurably by the blunt instrument that is the £97.5million signing of Romelu Lukaku from Inter Milan to lead their attack.
Superstar managers are all well and good, but when it comes to Van Dijk versus Lukaku, some games are equally as likely to be decided by individual battles.
Tuchel has tried to put distance between himself and his compatriot in the past, claiming they are ‘not half as close as people think’ and pointing out that, while their careers followed very similar paths, they have never worked for the same club at the same time.
‘It’s nice to be compared because he’s one of the best coaches in Europe,’ Tuchel told Sky before his first meeting with Klopp as Chelsea manager.
‘On one hand it’s nice because it tells you you’ve reached a certain level, and then at some point, it’s not nice because it does not tell the truth.
‘We do not have the years in clubs where we are in exchange, or where I can really learn from him, from his coaching methods, because I was never there when he was there.
‘It was not like I joined the academy of Mainz, and Jurgen was there as a head coach – that never happened.’
But Tuchel, whose Blues beat Liverpool 1-0 in that March encounter, does describe Klopp as a ‘genius’ adding: ‘Playing against him is a challenge. He makes me get up early.’
On Sunday, both Klopp and Tuchel will be hoping to land an early blow in the title race.
If Manchester City are to relinquish their Premier League crown next May you would expect it to go to a team managed by an obsessively passionate German coach in a baseball cap. Which one is anyone’s guess.