Thomas Tuchel during Leipzig-PSG, November 4, 2020. -
Michael Sohn / AP / SIPA
Thomas Tuchel, PSG coach, was dismissed from his post after the victory against Strasbourg on Wednesday night (4-0).
If the timing is surprising, there was not much doubt about the outcome of the story.
20 Minutes tries to tell you how, since the beautiful episode of the Champions League this summer, Thomas Tuchel has gradually lost the confidence of Leonardo.
Four months and a day.
This August 23, it was sunny and warm, we were not yet talking about a second wave and PSG switched to a slightly less soft strike from Mbappé or a slightly less cross head from Coman to be European champion.
Almost regardless (we say almost), PSG leaves the Final 8 in Lisbon with its head held high and the impression that it finally exists in the Europe of football, after ten years of failing miserably each time in the eighth or in half.
And in the middle of it all, coach Thomas Tuchel holds his benchmark.
The one that is supposed to offer him credibility, stature and confidence.
If her team were not brilliant in Lisbon, they gave the impression that something had happened in the group cohesion, on and off the pitch.
It was obviously only a one shot.
This December 24, after a frankly average start to the season, Thomas Tuchel was fired by PSG.
And apart from the timing, no one can admit to being really surprised ...
Before Final 8, Tuchel already unstable
Starting the story of Tuchel's end at PSG from Lisbon would be unfair to everyone.
Arrived in the summer of 2018, the Parisian coach was already in difficulty before the arrival of the pandemic.
Or more precisely at the time of the arrival of the Covid: beaten in Dortmund in the round of 16 first leg of the Champions League, Tuchel probably saved his post for the first time on his return, in an empty stadium, when his players snatched the qualification for the quarter-finals which would become Final 8.
Before that, Tuchel had been targeted after the pitiful elimination a year earlier against Manchester United, after the loss to Rennes in the Coupe de France final and roughly after every match (win or loss) where PSG seem to be waiting for Neymar or Mbappé does a feat rather than playing together.
Let's say it clearly: apart from a few interesting weeks at the start, Tuchel's PSG never gave more satisfaction, in terms of play, than Emery's.
Returned to business in the summer of 2019, Leonardo had indirectly targeted Tuchel by trying to restore order in an institution where he felt that the players were doing what they wanted.
But if many media lent him the idea of wanting to quickly install a coach that he would have chosen instead of Tuchel, Leonardo never really attacked the German, even evoking the "great coach" that he became.
The transfer window of discord
After the enchanted parenthesis of Final 8 - or Leonardo has probably not forgotten that PSG went 3 minutes from elimination in the quarterfinals against Bergamo - the return to reality is very hard for Tuchel.
Deprived of a billion players injured or on vacation, PSG loses its first two league games and tenses up again.
Tuchel, undoubtedly upset at not receiving a proposal to extend his contract, which ends in June 2021, raises his tone at a press conference by criticizing Leonardo's transfer window.
The Parisian sports director twists:
“We didn't like the statement.
The club did not like.
Me personally I did not like.
I think we have to understand the moment we are all living, there are very serious situations.
We will see internally how we do it.
But if someone is not happy, it's easy to talk.
But if he decides to stay, it is necessary to respect the sports policy, that is to say the internal rules.
"
This is the first public rift between Leo and TT.
Several media had assured that the Brazilian had knocked out the German after an unwelcome birthday party, organized by the players just days after the defeat in Dortmund, in February 2020. But there, it is worse.
Tuchel and Leonardo no longer agree on anything.
Contract extensions (the coach would have preferred to keep Thiago Silva), the recruits to target, the positions of the players.
And Tuchel begins to feel the pressure.
What he saw badly, aware now that it will not be extended in Paris.
“I was asked if I felt the pressure on me, and why it was like that, I said yes, I could feel it,” he says.
There are a lot of criticisms from the press, from experts, from the environment in general.
After the four titles and the final [of the Champions League] last season, I thought it would be calmer.
But no.
"
Fatalistic, he takes more and more freedoms in his interviews, explaining among other things that we must now "no longer dream" of a new contract.
An autumn to scuttle
During the fall, no one understands what Tuchel is trying to do on the pitch.
The Danilo Pereira episode in central defense, his defense at 5… his game plan became illegible.
PSG have never been so dependent on their tactics “Get by Neymar and Mbappé”.
At the end of October, after a nasty defeat against Manchester, some followers even think that Tuchel is doing everything to get fired.
"For me, it is sure and certain, he has no other reason to do that, explains the consultant France Bleu Eric Rabesandratana.
What is the point of putting Danilo behind and Marqui in 6?
No, he did that to piss off the world, to provoke the management, out of annoyance and misplaced pride ”.
A week later, Paris is on the verge of elimination after another defeat in Leipzig.
After this meeting in Germany,
20 Minutes also
title "Thomas Tuchel can he still hold a long time on the Parisian bench?
"He no longer seems to believe in it, Danilo does not hesitate to explain to the media of his country that he is not a defender and several players assure the Parisian, in the off, do not understand the choices of the coach.
We say to ourselves that the opportunity is dreamed for Leonardo if he wants to slash, especially as PSG is not brilliant in the league.
Yet nothing is happening.
Leonardo wants to wait for the winter break to reassess the situation, and several media ensure that anyway, a dismissal of Tuchel and his staff would cost too much at the moment to PSG.
Without forgetting, also, that the locker room never let go of the German coach.
In short, on borrowed time, Tuchel nonetheless raises the bar: not really helped by a series of incredible injuries, he still saves PSG in the Champions League and qualifies him for the knockout stages, a little by miracle.
But on the ground, it is still so sluggish: Paris loses against Lyon without existing or almost and suffers every weekend in Ligue 1, where it is now in third place.
It's not dramatic, far from it, but it's enough to finish convincing Nasser Al-Khelaïfi and Leonardo.
The day after a new quasi-suicidal interview with German media Sport 1 in which he criticizes PSG for his "lack of recognition", Thomas Tuchel is therefore dismissed.
The Team ensures that if the Parisian staff did not appreciate this interview at all, the decision had been taken before.
And given the speed to find Tuchel's replacement, Mauricio Pochettino, we tend to believe it.
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