Bean counter among themselves (nd current)

Did Thomas Tuchel and Pep Guardiola still meet for a glass of port? In the Casa da Foz or in the Morro d’Amores, maybe also in the cellars of Sandeman, Ferreira or Calém. There are all kinds of beautiful corners in Porto. The main thing is that there is a table in a quiet back room with plenty of glasses, pepper and salt shakers so that the gentlemen can simulate a football game.

In the most interesting case, the one in which you are decisively involved on this Saturday. The Champions League final between Chelsea FC and Manchester City in the Estádio do Dragão in Porto is ostensibly the most important, most spectacular, most expensive football game of the year, as well as the duel between two very special coaches.

Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel have had a kind of nerd complicity for years, which brings us to the glasses, pepper and salt shakers. This prehistory takes place in the spring of 2015 in Schumann’s bar in Munich’s Hofgarten. After saying goodbye to Bundesliga club FSV Mainz 05, Tuchel treated himself to a one-year sabbatical and accepted an invitation from colleague Guardiola, who was coaching FC Bayern at the time. The two did what two football crazy people do in the best restaurant in town.

Without further ado, they converted the table into a virtual soccer field, with salt and pepper shakers as defenders and strikers, plus glasses for the staff in the stage. The two battles in football history played out with enthusiasm. They are still silent about details to this day; Soon after, however, Pep Guardiola approached the board and recommended Thomas Tuchel warmly in the event that he himself would leave Munich.

As is well known, nothing came of this because Tuchel was already on the floor at Borussia Dortmund at the time. The contact between the two never broke off until they met again in the Premier League earlier this year. Guardiola, who has been acting Maestro in Manchester since 2015, warmly welcomed his colleague, Tuchel, to his difficult mission in London, which began in January: “He’s an exceptional trainer,” said Guardiola. “I am sure he will succeed. I’m glad to see him in England. “

Guardiola and Tuchel make a strange couple. Here the eternal lord seal keeper of aesthetically demanding football with an aura that leads one to believe that his people only play for the love of the game and pocket the money as a pleasant accompaniment. There the cross-head from Swabia, sometimes perceived as dogged, sometimes as empathy-free, which no fan has taken to his heart yet. Who was fired in Dortmund a few days after winning the Cup – and in Paris a few months after moving into the final of the Champions League. Protests against the forced resignations were kept within manageable limits at the grassroots level.

Even the worst critics of Thomas Tuchel do not doubt the tactical expertise of the coach Thomas Tuchel. He lives for the game and subordinates everything to it, including, of course, his personal sympathy values. Tuchel can change his tactical system several times during a game and has made every team better in a very short time. With Dortmund he was twice second and once cup winners, after years of international insignificance he finally led Paris to the premier class final, and in just a few weeks he made a top team from Chelsea, which was in disastrous disorder under Frank Lampard.

Tuchel is the first coach to have reached the final with two different teams in consecutive seasons. It is thanks to him that the Blues, who had previously fallen into mediocrity, rose to the second best team in the second half of the season in the Premier League, albeit by a long way behind his friend Guardiola’s Manchester City Football Club. He’s already twice in the top European final – and always won. Even if not with City, but with FC Barcelona, ​​which is in the prime of its football art. It’s been a couple of years.

Part of the common history of the coaches Guardiola and Tuchel is that sporting success is one-sided between them. Guardiola won four out of six direct duels and lost only one. The latter, however, was the semi-final in the FA Cup just a few weeks ago and the first reunion of the two since Guardiola’s departure from the Bundesliga five years ago. Chelsea’s win also thwarted City’s ambitions to take home all three major trophies this season.

Winning the championship has been certain for what felt like an eternity. For fans of tradition on the island, that triumph in the Premier League may be paramount – but the club management, which is funded with Arab petrodollars, has something else in mind. For the sheikhs of Manchester, the Champions League shines much stronger, so they invested a lot of money in the Catalan coach and even more in the team, so that the pot of the handles is finally in the trophy cabinet of the Citizens.

Now only Tuchel stands in the way of this project. But he quickly announced that he by no means intended to be a dear friend this Saturday. Immediately after the semi-final victory over Real Madrid, Thomas Tuchel announced that “we are not going to Istanbul to finish second”. Now he didn’t even have to go to Istanbul. Uefa moved the final to Porto at short notice, for obscure reasons common to the European football government.

Above all, they concern the quarantine-free arrival and departure of the numerous Uefa infantry. Therefore, the not so remote solution of playing the final of two English teams in England did not come about. So on to Porto, almost 2000 kilometers to the south. That fits well with this strange season with a competition scattered all over Europe, which naturally anticipated the vision of a corona-free world.

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Porto in May 2021 may seem like paradise to German football fans. 16,500 spectators are allowed into the stadium. Bars, cafés and wine cellars also welcome their customers beyond the chairs on the street. So it could really be that Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel secretly met for a glass of port before the game.