Thomas Tuchel has been unveiled as the new manager of the England team. It's a move that caught the entire country by surprise, with Lee Carsely still scheduled to remain in charge until 2025, but the German will be at the helm come the 2026 World Cup.
Tactically flexible, and with a reputation for tournament football, he's undeniably the most high-profile head coach currently on the market. But while his time at Bayern was a failure, and his stint at Chelsea still divides opinion, Adam Clery looks at the entire last decade of his career and talks us through why the FA were absolutely desperate to secure him.
Tactically flexible, and with a reputation for tournament football, he's undeniably the most high-profile head coach currently on the market. But while his time at Bayern was a failure, and his stint at Chelsea still divides opinion, Adam Clery looks at the entire last decade of his career and talks us through why the FA were absolutely desperate to secure him.
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00:00Right. Guten hello there everybody. Adam Cleary from 442 and a German managing the England
00:11team is what I would say if I was your dad. Yes after Lee Carsley took one hard look at
00:16what it means to be a real gangster and decided no that's not for him England have appointed
00:21Thomas Tuchel as their new head coach starting in January and taking him through to the World
00:27Cup. Now normally I do quite a long intro on these videos but we have we've got a lot
00:32to get through here so just sit down. That's definitely called right why have England made
00:42this appointment well in a nutshell Thomas Tuchel is the best manager currently available
00:47to them he's one of the most modern forward-thinking coaches out there he makes teams better in
00:52front of goal he makes them better at defending their own he makes players better individually
00:56he makes players better collectively Jurgen Klopp regards him as an exceptional coach
01:00Pep Guardiola says he's one of the few other managers he actually learns from and there
01:04is a German footballer whose name I will not mention because he has subsequently tried
01:09to distance himself from saying this but who did once say that he would literally kill
01:15a man if Tuchel asked him to do it. But what is it about any of that that makes him a really
01:20good fit for the England job specifically? Well if you just come here a second right
01:25Ich werde es dir sagen. Right straight off the bat if you watch anything or you read
01:31anything that tells you that Thomas Tuchel has this one system and that's how he plays
01:36and that's what he likes turn it off close your eyes it's wasting your time. Between
01:41Dortmund PSG Chelsea and Bayern he has used a 4-3-3 he has used a 4-2-3-1 he has used
01:49a 4-2-2-2 that was fun a 3-5-2 and what I secretly think you might see him do with England
01:59the 3-4-2-1 that he won the Champions League with at Chelsea. And all of these changes
02:05this flexibility comes from the fact that Thomas Tuchel believes that the system is
02:09merely a framework that enables individuality to function it's not rigid but rather needs
02:15to be used as a guidance and if you are hearing that thinking really insightful line you've
02:20used there Adam you come up with that all by yourself no no I did not that is a direct
02:26quote he said it he said it and it's what he thinks. What we're going to do now your
02:30video treat is we're going to go through a number not all but a number of the teams Thomas
02:34Tuchel has assembled during his managerial career looking at how they differ why he did
02:39what he did but also what consistence can we draw from them to try and understand how
02:45he might set England up. And I have not got time to ramble in this video but I just wanted
02:49to know I was up until god knows a clock last night researching this video and it's incredibly
02:55early recording it now so I am I'm slightly delirious but I think this is really good.
03:01You may at some point between now and his first England game hear that he's a bit of
03:04a defensive coach right and again turn that s**t off they are wasting your time. Here's
03:11the Borussia Dortmund team and apologies to any Mainz fans we are skipping that formative
03:15part of his career because just so long ago and there's only so much I can fit in right
03:18his Borussia Dortmund side was possibly the best thing to watch on the planet when it
03:25was around. He didn't enjoy the same success there that Jurgen Klopp did that weren't really
03:29the trophies to match it but he came second behind Bayern Munich in his first season and
03:34actually outscored them and what he did there was he took the 4-3-3 that he had inherited
03:40from Jurgen Klopp and made them not more possession focused or possession based but
03:45certainly a lot more comfortable in possession. One of the first things he did was he took
03:50Sven Bender a robust sort of all action tackling number 6 and he replaced him with Julian Weigl
03:57who was like a teenager at the time he was completely unproven but so naturally comfortable
04:03on the ball it meant in any phase of play Dortmund had him as an option and they could
04:08retain the ball really well. It was still one of the best high pressing sides in world
04:12football focusing on winning the ball back in this area but what he did was he evolved
04:16them so that when they had it in these areas instead they didn't just so repeatedly give
04:21it away trying to rush up the pitch as directly as possible and as a result Dortmund went
04:25from 54% possession in Klopp's last season to 65% in Tuchel's first. Oh wow Adam did
04:32they get 11% more possession I'm so impressed and yes absolutely fair comment but they did
04:37so whilst also scoring nearly double the number of goals and creating I can't remember
04:44exactly what it was but a lot more chances. So they weren't possession nerds but they
04:49were good in possession. So you remember Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool at their all conquering
04:53best right Dortmund were kind of similar in that you wanted the support for the forward
04:58to come from the two players in the wide areas they would get into those places and then
05:02the full backs they would push up and that's how you sort of got your line of five attackers
05:07which is kind of what every team wants to get. But instead what Thomas Tuchel wanted
05:11was for the wide players to stay wide to hold the width to stretch the opposition and then
05:16he played two very creative two very attacking tens in the number eight positions and they
05:23got up to support the forward. The full backs then wouldn't quite invert but they would
05:26support from sort of these got a spare these areas so that would sort of give you two three
05:32five and that was sort of the way he wanted them to attack and the reason you wanted to
05:36do this is because of the implications when it comes to rotations and combination play.
05:41If your width is coming from your full backs and you start rotating with any of these three
05:45central players all of a sudden you find yourself with a full back at number ten or possibly
05:49up front and that's not really the best use of them. But you get yourself two creative
05:54dynamic number tens and they've got no problem winding up as the centre forward they've got
05:58no problem going out wide and also your width is coming from attacking players who also
06:03have no problem in the half space or at centre forward.
06:07Now England obviously are stacked with nothing if not generational talent number tens and
06:14wide attackers so having a manager who likes to push them forward from centre midfield
06:19is mad useful but the really important thing to keep in mind when we're talking about international
06:24managers right is it's not necessarily about the team selection like you could give me
06:28the job and I might pick the same eleven as a Tuchel or a Guardiola or a Klopp or somebody
06:34it's about the coaching. Thomas Tuchel came into a side and coached this team to play
06:40with two attacking tens have lots of rotations in it to play with the forward line and not
06:46get left wide open. And all the while remember with a Julian Weigl type at number six not
06:53some brute who's going to go around making up all the gaps and stopping you getting counter
06:58attacked against just a ball player just a possession player just an Angel Gomez. It's
07:04not just about the selection we can all do the selection it is about the coaching and
07:09that is the experience that Tuchel has. And I think something that really speaks to the
07:13quality of that coaching right is remember you've got the wide players providing the
07:18width they're supposed to stay out onto the flank and the two tens are to provide the
07:21support for the centre forward right. And yet if I show you the numbers provided by
07:26Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Ilkay Gundogan that season that would appear to be completely
07:31counterintuitive. If he's getting in he's staying wide why is he having an amazing season
07:36in front of goal and he is not. And the reason again is the interchanges they were so good
07:43at rotating position mid game opening space for one another finding the pockets here and
07:47there that it meant Gundogan would routinely vacate that space and allow a better player
07:52in front of goal to get in there instead. And if you can bring yourself to think back
07:56to England at the Euros that was one thing you never saw the selection was very attacking
08:02and we had loads of these good players in the side but the combination play and players
08:06knowing when to drop and when to go was just never ever there like Bellingham and Foden
08:10for example practically played on top of each other. Anyway though as I say we've got absolutely
08:15loads to get through so this team was really really good but because it was really good
08:18it got gutted by much bigger sides they lost Hummels they lost Gundogan they lost Blazikowski
08:24and yet Tuchel then somehow only dropped one place in the league next season they were
08:29still really good. But from there he moved to France and PSG and it is there we got our
08:34second interesting little lesson. So he inherits a load of really useful versatile hard-working
08:40footballers but also he inherits Mbappe, Di Maria, Neymar, Cavani. He had worked with
08:46top level talents before this absolutely yes but this was his first time working with top level
08:52egos. Now he'll never admit it but I think he hated having to work with Neymar because obviously
08:57he's a brilliant footballer but he doesn't work particularly hard he doesn't contribute to the
09:00system and you've got to plan around him so we set up in this very basic 4-2-3-1 these three
09:07would lead the press these two would sort of back them up and he could just be there doing Neymar
09:12things. But the thing is Neymar got an absolutely massive injury that season so he was given the
09:18opportunity to kind of set up however he wanted and what he just about landed on was this sort
09:23of mad 3-4-3 which is sort of remarkable for somehow having like six actual defenders in it.
09:29It wasn't anything particularly special about the way it worked like Di Maria would just sort
09:33of float as a playmaker on this side trying to lay on things for Mbappe he would occasionally
09:37drop a bit which allowed Draxler to go in there Dani Alves would push right up it was pretty
09:42uninspiring. It was good in the league but in the Champions League it blew a two goal lead to this
09:49Man United team at home and Tuchel had a bit of an awakening that if he wanted to do anything with
09:55this PSG side he did need to find a way to accommodate Neymar's erratic genius. And so to
10:03quote Dr Dre who he apparently really likes he got in a lab with a pen and a pad and next season
10:08he came back with this 4-2-2-2 and this in my increasingly less humble opinion may well be one
10:17of the most ingenious tactical solutions we've seen across Europe in many a year. What you've
10:23got here effectively are two inverted playmakers in Angel Di Maria and Neymar. They start wide,
10:30they can receive the ball in those positions but they're ultimately free to play as dual
10:34tens. If they want to move into the middle they can, if they want to stay wide they can. They had
10:39very open roles and as a result what that meant was the full backs had to provide all the width.
10:45They had to get all the way up from the back to provide that sort of option out wide and also
10:51lead the press on that side. Now that is an insane ask of two players to cover that much ground
10:57across the pitch in various phases of play and not get caught wrong side when other teams break. So
11:02he went shopping for like robust big honest footballers, he got Paredes, he got Gueye and
11:07that made the midfields not so much of a luxury when Marco Verratti was there. You have these two
11:13options who could cover around all the space as well, basically boxed in these six as the attacking
11:18unit. And this by about a million miles is easily the best Neymar has ever looked since leaving
11:25Barcelona. Like this season and that sort of free playmaking wide number 10, whatever you want to
11:30call it, role, he was unbelievable. And I truly, genuinely, honestly, madly believe that were it
11:37not for COVID-19, this PSG team would have won the Champions League that year. Like this was their
11:43form going into lockdown, like they were scoring three, four, five goals every single game for fun
11:49and then six months later when they picked the tournament back up, it just didn't, it didn't
11:53have that momentum. They still only lost 1-0 to a very, very good Bayern Munich side and possibly
12:00the weirdest Champions League final that will ever take place. But just for about six or seven months
12:06he did something unbelievable with this. More important than that, right, I think this is a huge
12:11green flag, A, for someone who wants to be an international manager. Like he was lumbered with
12:17an incredible generational talent who did not fit anything he was trying to do. But rather than
12:22discard him, rather than fall out with him, rather than waste him, he completely reinvented the team
12:28to find a way to make that work. And even just away from that, this, just like the Dortmund system,
12:33is another astonishingly inventive use of number 10s. This time what you've got are two players
12:39who are very comfortable out wide, yes, but what they want to be doing is coming into the middle to
12:44evade their marker, nice little bits of interplay with the players in front of them and the ones
12:48overlapping and creating lots of chances for their teammates. And this would work perfectly
12:53with a Jack Grealish and a Cole Palmer. Whereas the 4-3-3 you had at Dortmund is obviously perfect
12:59for like Anthony Gordon, Bakayo Saka to hold the width and then come inside when they need to, but
13:04to have Foden and Bellingham, players like that, getting near the centre forward and interchanging
13:09with all three. And even when he was at Chelsea, which is the club where he took his casual flirtations
13:14with three at the back, Facebook official, he had briefly done it at both Dortmund and PSG,
13:19the system was still all about the use of these two 10s. Now Mason Mount and Timo Werner were his
13:25preferred two players in these positions, but again, this is Chelsea, even back then they had
13:29like a bajillion, squillion players, so loads of people had a go at it. But regardless, their job
13:35was to start centrally, receive the ball and drift out into these flanks to then draw markers and
13:41sort of spread the opposition. Like the Kai Havertz goal that wins the Champions League for Chelsea,
13:45that comes from just this exact pattern of play. Mason Mount receives the ball out wide, he creates
13:51a little bit of space and in that space Havertz drives and he finds him. Like that was it in its
13:56simplest form, working on the biggest stage. And if you remember as well, this was the season where
14:01not only did Rhys James look an absolute world beater, being sort of the width in this team,
14:06but Marcus Alonso went on a really weird goal scoring run because he kept finding himself
14:11in that space between Mount and the centre forward, effectively sort of
14:15playing as a 10. He was A, weirdly good at it and B, nobody expected him to be there.
14:21James would also get up into that position, but because Werner was a centre forward,
14:24they would then sort of overlap a lot and it was good interplay there, again,
14:28as the result of really good coaching. And while this Chelsea side did not set the world on fire,
14:35it was really good. And again, had very, very dynamic use of number 10s. I don't know if the
14:43point is getting through yet, but Thomas Tuchel has more uses of 10 than that really weird
14:49centre parting guy on my Instagram that keeps aggressively saying salted at me.
14:53And this one isn't so much of a tactical point, right? But I've seen some criticism of the
14:57appointment because, oh, didn't you just like completely flop at buy-in? I don't think that's
15:03entirely inaccurate to say, but I think the circumstances behind it aren't widely known over
15:08here. So the decision at buy-in to appoint Tuchel was basically the idea of Oliver Kahn and Hasan
15:14Salahamidzic, who were in very senior positions at the club at the time. But between Tuchel
15:19agreeing to take the job and him actually starting it, they both got turfed out. Replacing them first
15:25as CEO was this man, Jean-Christian Driessen, who had no previous real experience in football prior
15:32to taking the job. And the new sporting director was this man. Nobody. So during the summer,
15:38they set up this sort of like quite panicked and freeform transfer committee, which was never,
15:43ever going to work. And Tuchel said, look, you can go out and get whoever you want. Get Harry Kane
15:48if that makes you happy. But we need a defensive holding, complete progressive number six,
15:54because if we go into this season with just Goretzka and Kimmich as the double pivot,
15:59we're probably going to break down in a load of games. And they did go into that season with
16:05just Goretzka and Kimmich as the double pivot. And they did break down in a lot of games.
16:11And yes, to be fair, not winning a trophy at Bayern Munich is absolutely terrible. But also
16:18they actually got one more point in the league, finishing third under Tuchel
16:22than they had done actually winning it the year prior. So it's not it's not quite the
16:27anal prolapse it gets made out to be. So all that being said, what are the key consistence
16:33in Thomas Tuchel, which are particularly relevant for his appointment as England manager?
16:37Well, the one I've been trying to drill into your skull for the last God knows how long this video
16:42is, is that regardless of what formation he sets his team up in, his primary focus of his attacking
16:48play is in what can he do with number tens, whether they start wide and come in or they start
16:53centrally and push up or they're interchanging or they're rotating or doing whatever.
16:57That is where the focus of his attacking is. And England currently are stacked. They are
17:03absolutely spoiled for generationally talented number tens. He's also considered to be one of
17:10the best managers in the world at seamlessly melding controlled possession play with an
17:17aggressive high press. Just to chart you his career history in that regard. This is where
17:22all his teams have ranked in their league that season for possession and then for tackles in the
17:28final third. Like normally, not always, but normally you would expect teams that are high in
17:33one to be low in another because you want the opposition to have the ball so you can go and
17:37win it back. You're not really building up particularly well at the same time. But Tuchel
17:41has that down. He's able to coach that into teams. But I think most importantly of all,
17:46this isn't necessarily about his systems and his tactics is about him as a man. He's considered
17:52to be one of the greatest tacticians in the modern game when it comes specifically
17:56to knock out football. If you look at his last four seasons in the Champions League, there is
18:01astonishing consistency of progression. Like he won one of them, obviously, that's really good.
18:06He got to the final of another. And as I say, I think were it not for COVID, he would have won
18:10that one as well. He got to a semi-final where this absolute goalkeeping howler, not really sure
18:15what he could have done about that, knocked him out. And then a quarterfinal against Real Madrid
18:20where if they had already changed the away goals rule at this point, he would have gone through. So
18:26he's very good at this. And that's because he's renowned for being a meticulous planner when it
18:31comes to matches. He is so good at looking at an opposition team and working out where he can best
18:36exploit their weaknesses, changing the team to sort of fit that and then coaching these ideas
18:42into them in a very short space of time. Does it suck that there isn't currently an English
18:46manager who feels like he's at the same level as Tuchel or who certainly no other nations of
18:52our sort of standard would want to poach as their manager? Yes, yes, yes, it does. That's
18:58that needs addressed in the same way that the players needed addressed about 10 years ago.
19:05And they did that. So yes, of course, absolutely. This is one of the biggest talking points in
19:09football, probably all season. So please, I beg of you, give me your opinions on this
19:15in the comments below. Like I'm buzzed about it. I'm really hang on. I just remember to put a poll
19:20on my Instagram right before I started recording. Those are my social handles. If you want to go and
19:25vote in it. Where is everybody on this? Are people positive? Oh, okay. That is a full,
19:29that's a full thumbs up on the Instagram vote, which I'm genuinely quite surprised that I thought
19:34that would be more mixed. So yes, comments down below when you put this down, please,
19:40if you think this is good, let me know all the reasons why it's good in the comments below.
19:42But also if you're like, oh, for God's sake, I am so underwhelmed. I thought I'd be well,
19:46but I'm underwhelmed by this appointment. Please let me know that as well, because
19:51I don't know. I don't know how long the socials have been there, but obviously follow me on
19:55everything, please. It makes me so feel very happy. The new issue of 442, the new issue of 442,
20:01the 30th anniversary issue that is in stores now. It's the best one we have done in the entire time
20:07I've been there. And they're all really good, but this is exceptional. So go out and get that. Also,
20:11we have a party. We are having a party for our birthday that you can come to. I'm going to record
20:17something for that at some point, but there are links. You can find them places. I'll stick them
20:21down below if you want to come. It's me. It's Paul Merson. It's Ray Parler. It's other Adam as
20:26well, who you will really like in the 442 team and Jules Breach, our classic football shirts in
20:30London. That's going to be really good. 442 socials are in the corner of the video. Please
20:34do subscribe to the channel. I think that's everything. Thomas Tuchel, England manager.
20:37Auf Wiedersehen. That means goodbye. Goodbye.