:) I'd never heard of him, Ben Northern Canaries leader put me onto it, could be good!!

Thomas Tuchel's carnival club party on as Mainz maintain perfect start

Mainz are created in their manager's image - young, eager players happy to learn new things. And teach rivals a few too

Share 0
inShare0
Email

Mainz's head coach Thomas Tuchel
Thomas Tuchel applauds his Mainz team during the defeat of FC K?ln. Photograph: Marius Becker/EPA

It was May 1999, and Thomas Tuchel's dream was over. SSV Ulm, the amateur team he had played for four years, had just secured their second consecutive, sensational promotion. The Ralf Rangnick-coached club from the south-west were about to embark on their first ever season in the top-flight, but without Tuchel: the 24-year-old defender's semi-professional career had prematurely come to an end a year earlier, following a serious knee injury. He was working as a bartender in Stuttgart's Radiobar now, in order to pay for economics studies he didn't enjoy at all. He was, for want of a better, less brutal word, defeated.

"I was angry with my fate. That was the day I decided to stop working in the bar," he remembered. Tuchel finished his degree to prove to himself he could see something through ? earlier attempts to read Sport and English while he was playing had proved too ambitious. Then he tried to force a comeback. Rangnick, who had on moved on to manage VfB Stuttgart in the meantime, took him on. Tuchel's knee couldn't cope.

Two months later, he hung up his boots for good. Rangnick then offered him a different kind of opportunity. The young maverick who spent hours dissecting the zonal marking system of Milan's Arrigo Sacchi and introduced "four at the back" to the libero-infested backwaters of the Bundesliga saw something in Tuchel, one of the more difficult, demanding players he had coached. "He allowed me to shadow him as an intern and then I became manager of the Under-14s. That's how things started."

Tuchel worked his way up, believing that becoming a "trainer" should be approached like any other profession: "It's something you need to learn and understand, not a thing you do because there's nothing else left or because it seems like the logical next step after 400 professional matches." He won the Under-19s Bundesliga with Stuttgart in 2005, got his pro badge in 2007, won the U19 title with 1 FSV Mainz 05 in August 2009 and then found himself promoted to the seniors' bench a couple of weeks into last season. The newly promoted side surprised the league with a high-tempo pressing game that yielded plenty of wins and a fantastic ninth-place finish.

The notoriously difficult "second season" beckoned this year, but the self-professed "carnival club" has simply refused to stop partying. Mainz beat 1 FC K?ln 2-0 on Tuesday night to notch their fifth consecutive win of the campaign and stay top of the table. The delirious players carried an oversized "1" on to the pitch after the final whistle, perhaps in lieu of the real Number One, "The One" who makes it all happen but doesn't like to hog the limelight: Tuchel, 37, is the new superstar of German football.

Mainz have good players, obviously. There's Germany's Under-21 captain Lewis Holtby, on loan from Schalke, an attacking midfielder who scored both goals on Tuesday and harbours a not-so-secret ambition to switch allegiance to England, the country of his father. Andr? Sch?rrle, 19, is one of the league's most talented forwards and on his way to a ?8m move to Leverkusen. The club's smart strategy to establish themselves as the natural destination for 18- to 23-year-old prodigies is clearly paying off, both on and off the pitch.

But the fact that Tuchel was able to rotate his players and bring in five new ones on Tuesday without diminishing the overall quality of the performance points to his devastatingly good work, above all. Mainz are created in his image ? they're full of young, eager players happy to learn new things in every training session. For Tuchel doesn't really think "from game to game" as the cliche demands, but from "practice session to practice session". He breaks football down into the smallest possible parts and has his charges practise until they've internalised them all.

Tuchel is non-dogmatic on formations, chopping and changing in order to hurt the specific opposition most. The constants in Mainz's game are plenty of running, intense pressing and the fastest possible switch from defence to attack and vice versa. "The way we pressed and the quality of our runs would have made it possible for us to play in the Premier League tonight. This was the best game since I came here," said a beaming Tuchel after the win. No one wanted to argue with him. "Mainz play the way romantics still perceive English football," wrote S?ddeutsche Zeitung.

Side-parting aficionado Tuchel is into modernist furniture design and used to drive a bulky Saab 900. There's nothing retro about his management style, however. To his players, he comes across like an idealised version of an older brother. "He combines absolute authority with humanity," said Holtby. "Leading a Bundesliga team is 100% about human relations," said the manager. "My idea of leadership is all about respect and appreciation."

There are plenty of rules to that effect, from a total ban on the use of second names to the requirement to look into the other person's eyes when one says "good morning". Tuchel stresses good manners, punctuality, personal development. Tactically, he's also willing to put in the extra work. He spent the World Cup recording specific things he admired in the various teams, from Germany's 4-2-3-1 to Chile's 3-3-3-1 and Mexico's ball circulation. His favourite side are Barcelona, naturally, but the reason he gives is a little different and very telling. "Their outstanding quality is their devotion and passion when it comes to winning the ball back in the opposition's half once they lose it," he said. "That's only possible with a huge amount of humility. It's not a given that stars at this high level are collectively committed to an idea and that no one takes the liberty of doing a little less of the hard work."

How long and far can they keep it going this season? "We don't live beyond our means, these are our means," insists Tuchel, but he refuses to set a new target or entertain thoughts of Europe. On Saturday, the man who walked out of a bar takes on Bayern Munich in the Allianz Arena. You can't help but wonder what new punchline fate will have in store for him.

Posted By: DrDublin, Nov 3, 14:50:53