This is how Thomas Tuchel looks at the Bundesliga final

In his first days in Munich, Thomas Tuchel earned praise from the most powerful man at his new club. He couldn’t do it with games, not with training, not with dialogue. He did that with press conferences.

“His two press conferences were summa cum laude,” said Uli Hoeneß to the “kicker” – and then continued to praise: “A way of expression ready for printing. This is Bayern Munich. He internalized this club in two days.”

The coach was not only praised in the days and weeks that followed. He and his team were eliminated from the DFB Cup and the Champions League. And if Borussia from Dortmund wins their last game in the Bundesliga against Mainz this Saturday (3.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky), Tuchel will certainly end this season without an official title.

On the day before the duel in Cologne, Tuchel had to compete in a discipline where you can’t win a title: the press conference. And his penultimate of the season was perhaps his toughest: Because what do you say when you’re in a situation you don’t want to be in?

In the press room on Säbener Straße, the question-and-answer game begins with the long-distance duel for the championship: will Tuchel see what happens in Dortmund? “We have to win – then we can see,” he says, but: “Anything can happen. There just has to be a little inattention: red card, penalty decision, set pieces, deficits, I don’t know. It can always happen.” And before the first FC Bayern Munich fans can get any hope in the stream, Tuchel says: “But that can also happen to us. We’ve had enough games where it happened to us.” And because he knows that, he doesn’t want to make any announcements to Dortmund either.

The self-critical part of the press conference follows, in which Thomas Tuchel says: “It won’t be another season that we’re happy with.” And: “We’re definitely not happy with the way we play.” And: “As soon as I sign, as soon as I put on a jersey, as soon as I put on a training jersey, as soon as I’m on the sidelines and in training, I’m in charge.”

The focus is then on the people in charge who are responsible for him, the coach. A reporter wants to know how Tuchel looks at May 30th, the day when the supervisory board of FC Bayern Munich AG meets and discusses how things will continue with the board members. “Why May 30,” asks Tuchel – and you don’t know if you should believe his ignorance. “Oh,” he says when the reporter explains it. The core sentence of his answer: “I have no influence on it – the best thing is if I free myself.”

But even in this situation, it wouldn’t be a Thomas Tuchel press conference if he didn’t make a joke. When a reporter asked what they would give the team from Mainz for a win in Dortmund, Tuchel smiled and replied: “We delivered the gift four weeks ago. There’s someone in debt. Massive.” He means the 3-1 defeat on the 29th matchday.

On Friday afternoon, Thomas Tuchel is done with all the questions after 20 minutes. He will have to speak at a press conference for the last time this season in Cologne on Saturday evening. And if everything should turn out differently than expected, it could be his simplest.