German. With frankness and against all the rules of communication. Asked Wednesday evening after the victory against Lyon (3-0) about his counterpart from PSG, coach Hansi Flick ended his answer with an astonishing confidence after having praised Thomas Tuchel. “His team is working very well. He is doing an exceptional job, says the coach of the opponent PSG in Lisbon. I look forward to seeing him on Sunday. I visited him once. »What to arouse curiosity.
The meeting actually dates from Tuchel's first season at PSG, during the 2018 - 2019 financial year. Flick spent two weeks in Paris, attending the Loges camp every day for the training of his compatriot then freshly enlisted by the club of the capital. A kind of internship for the former assistant in German selection Joachim Löw, then aspiring to pass number 1 and in search of information on the role of head coach.
Position he has held since last November, replacing the Croatian Niko Kovac, disembarked. At the end of his few months in Bavaria, he has just won the first Champions League final of his career. Like Tuchel, of course. Hans-Dieter Flick has been appointed as an interim. At the start of his term in the fall, rumors of Thomas Tuchel arriving on the bench for the 2020-2021 season picked up again.
Rummenigge wanted Tuchel, Hoeness much less
This Arlesian draws its credibility in this "I love you me neither" that the German champion and the PSG coach have been dancing for two years. In spring 2018, coach Jupp Heynckes, after yet another visit to Bavaria, must hand over. The club's board of directors is then torn apart, through the two thinking heads of the board. On the one hand, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, on the other, Uli Hoeness. The first campaign actively to engage Thomas Tuchel, free for a year, since in fact he slammed the door of Dortmund where his offensive game had seduced.
Hoeness vetoed it. Little by little, Rummenigge manages to convince the most influential members of the board of directors and the supervisory board as well. The first club in Germany is a historically political entity where the restless backstage sometimes clashes as much as the game offered at the Allianz Arena. The pundits of the red house, initially skeptical of Tuchel's personality, considered very independent with the leaders and volcanic with the press, finally authorized Rummenigge to negotiate his arrival.
In the meantime, via a Qatari diplomat living in Germany, the Emir owner of PSG was convinced by the idea of replacing Unai Emery by Thomas Tuchel. He is seduced by the profile of this young German coach, 45 at the time, who led Dortmund to the quarter-finals of the Champions League, released by the formidable Monaco of Leo Jardim and Kylian Mbappé in 2017.
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Happy to have won his showdown against Hoeness, Rummenigge telephones Tuchel, who tells him that he is sorry because he has just given his word to PSG. The Bavarian leader fulminates, resents his board, this guilty waste of time. Finally, Hoeness takes over and chooses Niko Kovac. We now know the rest.