From our special correspondent in Lisbon,
It is the story of a young defender of 20 years whose career is brutally stopped by an injury, that his coach takes as a student and launches as a coach to find him, fifteen years later in semi - Champions League final. The student takes the opportunity to proclaim his gratitude to his mentor to the whole world and to reiterate how much he admires him. This rosewater tale that thought to read those who put their noses in the common past of Thomas Tuchel and Julian Nagelsmann, who will face each other by bench Tuesday in the semi-final of the Champions League, does not exist. Or little. No, Tuchel is not Yoda and Nagelsmann Luke Skywalker, even if the first played an important role in the premature professional retraining of the second.
Little flashback. 2007 was a year of bad luck: Young Augsburg B-team defender Julian Nagelsmann suffered a serious knee injury. The one too many, already. “After that, I didn't want to hear about football anymore,” said the RB Leipzig coach. His coach at the time, Thomas Tuchel, is not insensitive to the trajectory of the boy who looks like two drops of water to his - the Parisian coach hung up his crampons at 25 because of chronic knee injuries - and offers him to integrate his staff. But the proposal is above all pragmatic. Nagelsmann is a dead point in Augsburg's payroll that must be made profitable at all costs as the club is not running on gold. A lost defender, a found staff member. Tuchel:
“We suggested that he go observe our opponents. He did it very carefully, in detail […] I saw his reports in the Bavarian National League, and you could see that he could find specific details and solutions, which he can describe very well. the opponents. There was talent in the analysis of the match and the opponents. It was once recommended that it was clear that with his injuries [he would not resume football], to pass his coaching licenses. "
Paternalism and familiarity
The influence of the Parisian on Nagelsmann, this "very annoying player because he wanted to know everything" stops there. Six months after his freelance analyst, the latter left to give life to his career as a youth coach in Munich 1860.
If the prodigy of the German benches often quotes him alongside Guardiola, Simeone and Conte as being part of his models, it is more out of respect for Tuchel than out of real admiration. “I am obviously very grateful to him, because it was him, so to speak, who gave me the idea to become a coach. For the rest, the idea of a filiation with his elder extrapolated for narrative purposes annoys him at least a little. “He was never my adoptive father, as some like to say. Almost as much as the paternalism of Tuchel, who would be the only one to allow himself to speak on familiar terms with Nagelsmann, a question of old status and age. "Me, I see my colleagues because I do not like people talking to me on the pretext that I am young", he tackled in Bild . Hello the mood.
What remains of the myth of the pupil and the teacher? How did we come to fantasize about a human relationship that obviously never existed in this form? Markus Kaufmann, author of the biography of Thomas Tuchel. “Indeed, it's not as if they were super close and that they stayed that way. But they come from the same area, had a similar background, experienced high-level football and stopped early, were both defenders. They both started as a coach in pro structures but young and without much money. Finally, these are the guys who organized sessions with functions other than winning matches. "
False geeks, true leaders of men
They are also two men cataloged as "laptop trainers", understand football geeks addicted to data and statistics of all kinds. A somewhat easy shortcut, on the pretext that Tuchel has an unspeakable nerd look and that Nagelsmann likes to play around with drones to get an aerial view of training sessions. “The two are labeled as laptop coaches ,” Kaufmann continues, “whereas every time they land somewhere, their number one concern is to unite a collective, a group and I find that funny. We have the impression that they are very tactical, that they are based on numbers and stats when in fact the guys talk to you all the time in groups, about living together. "
🔴🔵 PSG
🗨️ Tuchel: "It's incredible to face Nagelsmann in the semi-final" pic.twitter.com/lm2I7uOMv1
An omnipresent dimension since the first TT title in Shenzen (Champions Trophy) where, remember, the Parisian coach was sprayed with champagne by his players. Things do not move on the eve of his first semi-final of the Champions League: “We have to create an atmosphere for a year, not for a match and I think we did it. The players are very calm and happy to be together. "
The idea is as follows: the two coaches support the idea that to be successful, it is essential to erect a breast framework in the locker room. Nothing revolutionary, but it works. In this regard, Tuchel is one step ahead of his younger brother in the sense that he has succeeded, to a lesser extent in Dortmund and especially in Paris, to tame a locker room full of cracks, which Nagelsmann also recognizes in a interview with France Football . “What he does at PSG deserves respect. The way he manages Neymar is impressive and training PSG is not easy ”.
Finally, the two men are not dogmatic, German flexibility requires. Markus Kaufmann: “Where they are good is that they manage to make their teams play in a different way, even if it is true that Tuchel has less room for maneuver at PSG. But for example, Nagelsmann will succeed in adapting to bypass Atlético's 4-4-2. "And against Paris, his" mentor "knows," Julian will adapt defensively to our structure ". "The last common point, concludes the author, is that they have succeeded wherever they have been." Tuesday evening, around 10 or 11 p.m. depending on the scenario of the match, there will be one who has been more successful than the other.
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