Thomas Tuchel's fascinating coaching journey from Mainz to England manager
Thomas Tuchel spent the best part of a decade honing his craft on Bundesliga touchlines with Mainz and Borussia Dortmund, before reaching consecutive UEFA Champions League finals with Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea. He then got his hands on the Bundesliga title with Bayern Munich and is now England manager in the next chapter of his compelling coaching journey.
A defender by trade, Tuchel joined the Augsburg youth academy as a teenager but was released at the age of 19 without ever making the first team. He subsequently had a short-lived spell with the Stuttgarter Kickers in Bundesliga 2, making eight outings at that level, before joining third-tier outfit Ulm.
There he played 68 times before being forced to hang up his boots for good due to a serious knee injury at the age of 24 in 1998.
Eager to prove to himself that he could be a success away from the football pitch, Tuchel studied Business Administration at university, working as a waiter in a bar at the same time.
Yet the pull of football remained strong and Tuchel's springboard into coaching came from none other than Ralf Rangnick, who would go on to enjoy success with Schalke, Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig, as well as taking charge of Manchester United and Austria. The two struck up a good relationship at Ulm, where Rangnick was head coach from 1997 to 1999, and after recovering from his knee injury, Tuchel was keen for one last throw of the dice as a pro.
He contacted Rangnick, then in charge at VfB Stuttgart, nine months later asking for a trial with the club's reserves. Rangnick was only too happy to oblige, but when Tuchel was ultimately unable to continue playing due to chronic cartilage damage, Rangnick sowed the coaching seeds by asking if he could imagine working in youth football.
Curiosity piqued, Tuchel shadowed coaches in the club's academy for a while before eventually taking over the U14 team in 2000. His foot now firmly wedged in the door, there was no looking back.
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Learning on the job and guided by late mentor Hermann Badstuber – father of former Stuttgart and Bayern defender Holger – Tuchel was promoted to assistant coach of the U19s in 2004, swiftly demonstrating his promise on the touchline by helping the side win the U19 Bundesliga title the following year.
That sparked a rapid ascent up the ladder and, just nine years after waiting tables in a bar, he would be in a Bundesliga dugout for the first time thanks to his tactical shrewdness, man management and ability to recognise and grab opportunities when they arose.
In 2006 he returned to Augsburg, this time as U19 head coach, completing his coaching badges that same year. In 2007/08 he took charge of the club's reserve team before switching to Mainz and winning the U19 Bundesliga title in 2008/09 with a side that included future World Cup winner André Schürrle.
Credentials well and truly established, in summer 2009 he was targeted by both the German Football Association (DFB) for a role as U21 assistant coach and Hoffenheim for a position as reserve team head coach.
However, the appeal of the Bundesliga was too strong and he was named as Mainz first team coach on 3 August 2009 after his predecessor, Jörn Andersen, was dismissed following the side's DFB Cup first-round exit to lower-league outfit VfB Lübeck.
Despite Mainz only being promoted to the top flight the previous season, Tuchel steered them to a ninth-placed finish in his debut campaign. He then kicked off his second term at the helm with seven successive wins, including a 2-1 victory away to record champions Bayern.
Mainz earned a shot at the UEFA Europa League for the first time in the club's history after finishing fifth in 2011/12, only to be beaten over two legs by Romanian side Gaz Metan Medias in the third qualifying round.
During his time at Mainz, Tuchel earned a reputation as one of German football's most tactically astute young coaches, regularly switching up formations according to the task in hand, whilst always staying faithful to his own unique fundamentals.
"There's definitely a style that’s been attributed to me, that we brought to the table at Mainz: pace going forward and attack-minded football,” he told German newspaper Die Zeit. "I prefer certain qualities, an active playing style, bold defending and pacy play in attack."
Watch: Tuchel's Top 5 Mainz moments
He is also unafraid to take unconventional approaches to his work. Once, instead of using video analysis following a painful defeat, he motivated his players with a quote from NBA legend Michael Jordan: "I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
Similarly, Tuchel also contracted a young hobby football analyst, René Marić, to do scouting and opposition analysis for him. At the time, Marić was merely an enthusiastic football fan, posting his musings to his blog.
Tuchel saw one of his reports and was impressed; it helped kick-start Marić's career, and he has since gone on to work at Borussia Mönchengladbach, Borussia Dortmund, Leeds United, while he is currently Vincent Kompany's assistant at Bayern.
To this day, Tuchel remains the most successful coach in Mainz's Bundesliga history (of those to oversee at least a full season), averaging more points per game (1.41) than the man who took them into the top flight for the very first time back in 2005/06 - Jürgen Klopp (1.13).
Feats of that kind do not go unnoticed, and after five overachieving years at Mainz he took a 12-month sabbatical before succeeding Klopp yet again, this time at Dortmund.
Watch: Tuchel's Bundesliga highlights
There, he nurtured young talents including Christian Pulisic and Ousmane Dembélé, turning them into world-beating wingers, as well as helping BVB finish as Bundesliga runners-up in 2015/16 and taking the side to DFB Cup glory the following year.
And, as was the case at Mainz, he became the most successful coach in Dortmund history with an average of 2.09 points per Bundesliga game, a record he holds to this day.
Tuchel's time in Dortmund lasted just two seasons and, nine years after his first job as head coach, he was appointed at the helm of French giants Paris Saint-Germain in summer 2018, winning the Ligue 1 title in his maiden campaign. He backed that up with the domestic treble the following season, then took the club to its first ever Champions League final, narrowly missing out as PSG youth product Kingsley Coman secured the crown for Bayern in 2020.
Picking up the reins at Chelsea in January 2021, where he took over from Frank Lampard, Tuchel worked wonders, taking the club from ninth to fourth in the Premier League and reaching a second straight Champions League final.
With the help of fellow Bundesliga-made stars Pulisic, Kai Havertz and Timo Werner, he got the better of Manchester City and ex-Bayern coach Pep Guardiola in Porto to get his hands on continental football's biggest honour - earning the 2022 FIFA Best Coach prize for his efforts.
Following his dismissal from his Chelsea duties at the start of the 2022/23 season, Tuchel had to wait seven months for his next job.
After rumours in previous years about interest from Bayern, the Bavarian-born coach finally rocked up in Munich to take the reins of Germany's biggest club in March 2023.
And he started in considerable style, claiming a 4-2 win over old side Dortmund in Der Klassiker on his debut. The honeymoon was short-lived, though, as the next game brought DFB Cup quarter-final elimination at home to Freiburg, before a 4-1 aggregate defeat to Manchester City at the same stage of the Champions League saw Bayern out of Europe by mid-April.
It left only the Bundesliga title to play for, with Bayern ending up trailing BVB going into the final day. It went down to the wire as a late Jamal Musiala winner in Cologne saw the Bavarians pounce on a Dortmund slip - at home to Mainz - to retain the Meisterschale for an 11th straight year.
Watch: Tuchel reflects on the drama of the 2023 title race
Tuchel's first full season in charge at the Allianz Arena started quite well - after losing the Supercup at home to Leipzig - as they breezed through their Champions League group with five wins and a draw. Thirteen wins from 16 Bundesliga games up to the winter break was, on paper, excellent and in fact one of the best starts by any team to a Bundesliga season.
But all wasn't quite right in the Bayern world. They were still trailing a seemingly - and yes, ultimately - unbeatable Bayer Leverkusen side. His side had also been knocked out in the second round of the DFB Cup by Saarbrücken of the 3. Liga in November.
Following a run of three straight defeats in February to Leverkusen, Lazio and Bochum, the club announced that they would be parting ways with Tuchel at the end of the season, with a year still remaining on his contract.
Watch: Tuchel discusses the decision for him to leave Bayern
This sparked talk of a lame duck coach as he had to see out the campaign, especially with it looking like the Bundesliga title was Leverkusen's to lose. But the fact that the Champions League was the only realistic title they could now win, it appeared to galvanise the team as they overturned the first-leg loss to Lazio, saw off Arsenal in the quarter-finals and then found themselves in Europe's top four for the first time since 2020.
That resurgence then ignited discussions of a U-turn and internal discussions about Tuchel in fact staying on. However, there was no going back on the original decision.
And when Bayern fell to a late loss at Real Madrid to miss out on a place in the final against Dortmund at Wembley, the curtain essentially came down on Tuchel's time in Munich with a general sense of disappointment and wondering what could have been.
Tuchel will now get to take charge of many more games at Wembley, though, as he takes the reins of England as only the third foreign boss of the Three Lions from 2025, originally taking him through to the 2026 FIFA World Cup. What's the German for "It's Coming Home"?
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