Thomas Tuchel took England to four minutes from a final, and stayed

Thomas Tuchel

Photo: Bryan Berlin / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	August 29, 1973 Krumbach
Occupation	Footballer
Honours	Champions League 2020-21 · Club World Cup 2021 · Super Cup 2021 · Bundesliga 2022-23 · Ligue 1 ×2 · DFB-Pokal 2016-17 · German Cup 2017 · Super Cup
Individual awards	The Best FIFA Men's Coach · UEFA Men's Coach of the Year

With four minutes of normal time left in Atlanta, England were a goal up on Argentina in a World Cup semi-final. Then Enzo Fernández scored from distance, Lautaro Martínez headed in a Lionel Messi cross deep in stoppage time, and Thomas Tuchel walked into the press room to call the run “an achievement”, adding at once that nobody wanted to hear that, himself included. On his future he needed one sentence: “We keep on going with the contract until the home Euros.”

Coming from Tuchel, that sentence was the news. Few coaches of his generation have won so much and kept jobs so briefly. Borussia Dortmund dismissed him three days after he won the German Cup. Paris Saint-Germain let him go four months after their first Champions League final, and Chelsea did the same a little over a year after he had made them champions of Europe. After a semi-final lost in stoppage time, the Football Association did not even reopen the question.

The road there began in Krumbach, the Swabian town in Bavaria where Tuchel was born on 29 August 1973 and where his father, Rudolf, coached him at the local club. FC Augsburg’s academy released him at 19 without a first-team appearance. He played central defence for Stuttgarter Kickers and SSV Ulm until damaged knee cartilage ended his playing days at 25. While he studied business administration he worked behind the bar at the Radio Bar in Stuttgart.

Ralf Rangnick brought him into VfB Stuttgart’s youth department, where his under-19 side won the national title in 2005. After three years back at Augsburg, Mainz 05 handed him its first team in 2009, at the club where Jürgen Klopp had made his name. Players there met the drills that still follow him: pitches with the corners cut off, defenders holding tennis balls. Mainz finished fifth in 2011 and reached Europe. In 2014 he left and spent a year without a club.

Dortmund hired him in 2015, again as Klopp’s successor. His first side finished second with 82 league goals, a club record, and lost the cup final to Bayern Munich on penalties. The second season delivered his first major trophy, a 2-1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in the 2017 German Cup final. It was also the season in which explosives went off beside the team bus on the way to a Champions League quarter-final against Monaco. The match was played the following evening, Tuchel said publicly that his players had not been consulted, and the distance between the coach and the club’s leadership never closed. He was dismissed three days after the final.

Paris gave him Neymar and Kylian Mbappé. He won Ligue 1 twice, swept the domestic trophies in his second season and took the club to its first Champions League final, lost 1-0 to Bayern in Lisbon in August 2020. On Christmas Eve that year PSG dismissed him. Chelsea hired him a month later to replace Frank Lampard, and within four months the club were European champions, after a 1-0 win over Manchester City in the Porto final. The Super Cup and the Club World Cup followed. The club changed owners in 2022; under the consortium led by Todd Boehly, Tuchel lasted until the morning after a 1-0 defeat in Zagreb that September.

Bayern Munich came next, in March 2023, in place of Julian Nagelsmann. Tuchel won the Bundesliga on the final day of that season, and in the following one the club’s run of eleven straight titles ended on his watch. His departure was agreed in February, before Bayern knocked out Arsenal and reached the Champions League semi-finals, lost to Real Madrid after a disputed offside call. The results would have satisfied most clubs. The relationship ran out first.

The usual explanation is that Tuchel is hard to live with, and the record lends it support. Heinz Müller, a goalkeeper at Mainz, called him a dictator; Roman Weidenfeller, who kept goal for him at Dortmund, said he was beyond reproach on football and difficult as a person. In England the file has a newer page. After a friendly defeat to Senegal he said parts of Jude Bellingham‘s on-pitch rage came out in a way that was “a bit repulsive”, and later apologised, blaming a second language and too little sleep. He left Phil Foden, Cole Palmer and Trent Alexander-Arnold out of his World Cup squad. In the semi-final, his switch to a back five after 71 minutes became the main exhibit for anyone who believes he gave the lead away himself. The hard-to-live-with version leaves out one thing: the same exactness built a side that won eight qualifiers without conceding a goal.

The FA had announced him in October 2024 as Gareth Southgate’s successor and the first German to coach England, starting in January 2025. In February 2026 it extended his contract to the end of Euro 2028, which England co-host, with a performance clause that the federation’s chief executive has acknowledged. The World Cup tested every part of the method. England won Group L, opening with a 4-2 win over Croatia. Harry Kane scored twice in the last quarter of an hour to overturn DR Congo in Atlanta, and ten-man England won 3-2 at the Estadio Azteca to end Mexico’s tournament.

Bellingham scored both goals in the 2-1 quarter-final win over Norway in Miami. Tuchel said publicly that the team had played below its level; Bellingham answered on camera, “Oh well, whatever… It’s difficult out there”; the coach debriefed the whole squad and moved on to Argentina. Three days after the semi-final, England beat France 6-4 for third place, with a Bukayo Saka hat-trick. It was their first competitive win over France since 1982 and their best World Cup finish since 1966. “We had a brilliant first half and a turbulent second,” Tuchel said.

The autumn has looked like a squad that kept the lesson: three wins in four Nations League games. The defeat came against Spain, the new world champions, 3-2. England then won 7-0 in Rijeka, the heaviest defeat in Croatia’s history, and beat Czechia 3-0 at Wembley on 6 October, the night Kane drew level with Peter Shilton on 125 caps. “We’re on a high level,” Tuchel said afterwards.

Away from the touchline he speaks German, French and English. He married Sissi Tuchel in 2009; the couple, who have two daughters, divorced in 2022. His individual honours include The Best FIFA Men’s Coach and UEFA’s men’s coach of the year award, both earned with the Chelsea side of 2021.

November brings Croatia and Spain again, and with them the group. The larger appointment is the summer of 2028, a European Championship on home soil that his contract was written to reach and that its performance clause keeps conditional. Tuchel has rarely stayed anywhere long enough to defend what he built. England have given him the chance to try.

Tags: sports, athletes, football managers, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Chelsea FC, Jude Bellingham, Borussia Dortmund, England national football team, Thomas Tuchel