“Professionally, I had a shitty Christmas, but I think I got the best present. “ Thomas Tuchel is not bitter. When you’re on the roof of Europe, it’s not the first taste to come in your mouth. The Chelsea manager is at first surprised, almost intoxicated by his trajectory in recent months. At the Dragon Stadium in Porto, the German gave the tactical lesson to Pep Guardiola and his Manchester City (1-0) in the Champions League final. The day before last New Year’s Eve, he was busy emptying his PSG coaching desk.
His victory is also the defeat of Guardiola. The Catalan is perhaps the meeting between a philosopher of the game and a tactical genius, it sometimes happens to him to make knots in the brain, too wanting to control everything, anticipate and change everything at the last moment. After the three-way defense during the elimination against Lyon in August 2020 in the quarter-finals, this time he brought out of his brain in turmoil a team without a real number six, he who most often likes to deprive himself of a center-forward . Why ? The person concerned does not know it any more or judges that the moment was not yet for mea-culpa. ” Regrets ? I don’t know… The decisions I made, all that… ”, he sighs without finishing his sentence at a press conference.
Like Tottenham in 2019, like Tuchel’s PSG in 2020, Manchester City were turned down for their first Champions League final despite their favorite status. The proof that the C1 is the fierce type with the new contenders. Chelsea had the cruel experience in 2008, beaten at the end of the penalty shoot-out by Manchester United before taking an unexpected revenge four years later against Bayern Munich with an interim on the bench, Roberto Di Matteo.
Champions of England with 19 points ahead of their evening opponent (4e), the Citizens started off as favorites but missed out on the event. The presence of 14,110 spectators at the Dragon stadium gave life to this final, but especially to the Blues animated by a new collective force.
Tuchel has “changed the mentality of the team”
Since the arrival of Tuchel at the end of January in place of Franck Lampard, Chelsea has become a formidable machine to defend intelligently and to counter well. The former Dortmund calmed his taste for tactical DIY by moving from Paris to London. The first period was the perfect illustration. ” I asked everyone to raise their level of play, to dare things when they had the ball ”, Thomas Tuchel said.
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