In the long history of the Champions League and its predecessor, the European Cup, there have only been three German winners in 65 years: FC Bayern, Borussia Dortmund and Hamburger SV. With FC Chelsea 1-0 against Manchester City in the final in Porto, German football can now report a remarkable success within just two years: With Thomas Tuchel, the third German coach has won the most coveted club cup in Europe. A year ago, Hansi Flick had succeeded with FC Bayern. In the last final of the Champions League before the pandemic, Jürgen Klopp won with Liverpool FC.
Tuchel, Flick and Klopp.
As different as this trio of outstanding German coaches may be, they now have one thing in common with their victories in the premier class: all three football teachers can, for good reasons, claim a decisive share in the success of their teams.
It is not an exaggeration to say that all three triumphs were the direct product of their very special work.
These European masterpieces would not have been possible without Tuchel, Flick and Klopp.
The victories of Chelsea, Bayern and Liverpool are above all coaching victories.
None of these three successes in the Champions League was inevitably in a football billion dollar business that had gotten financially out of control in recent years.
Tuchel took over Chelsea FC at the end of January as the bottom of the table in the Premier League and made a team that went down in two games 1: 7 in the last sixteen against FC Bayern (0: 3, 1: 4) , in record time to the new number one in Europe.
A breathtaking turbo ascent.
Flick, on the other hand, transformed the troubled FC Bayern, which had dropped to fifth in the Bundesliga after the dismissal of its predecessor, within a few months with an unchanged squad again into an invincible super team that, in addition to the Champions League, won all the other titles that there was to be won.
A phenomenal comeback story.
And in May 2019, when the world was not yet out of joint, Klopp had made Liverpool FC, which had disappeared in English and European oblivion, thanks to its years of renovation work and a year after a final defeat, the football king in Europe.
An epochal football renaissance.
From a coach's perspective, Tuchel's triumph at Porto has a very special charm: He defeated Pep Guardiola, the role model for a whole generation of coaches, including his own.
In Barcelona, Guardiola once ensured that the belief spread in football that coaches could be more important than players.
But now his defeat shows that the inventor of coaching football has been chasing after the most important title in vain for ten years.
Despite the billions that Arab investors sank at Manchester City for this - after Guardiola had already failed to lead Bayern at least once into the final in one of their great heydays within three years.
Again and again, when it comes down to it in a knockout game in Europe, the Catalan reaches his limits.
With Tuchel's coaching victory, perhaps the greatest coaching myth of the past decade will finally be resolved.