If you heard an odd brushing sound on Tuesday evening, it was probably the German media’s collective eyebrow raising at England’s decision to hire Thomas Tuchel as head coach.
From Munich to Monchengladbach, the reaction has been a heady cocktail of quiet pride, nationalistic glee and thick irony.
You get the sense Tuchel is respected but not adored in his homeland, that they would rather be able to lord the need for a German manager over England rather than have this gangly genius to themselves.
While a fair chunk of the reaction simply highlighted the English tabloid head loss at a foreign appointment, the strongest source of sardonic humour was unsurprisingly Bild, Germany’s premier red-top, where one columnist wrote: “The motherland of football gets a German dad. Madness!
“Since 1966 – 1966!!!! – the proud football nation has been waiting for a trophy (and sorry, even the World Cup victory only happened because the referee made a mistake). It will soon be 60 years without a title. In that time, we’ve won the World Cup three times and the European Championship three times. Oops.
“The despair on the island must be immense if they realise only a German can help now. What a tribute to Tuchel and German football that the English are jumping over their shadows despite the huge rivalry.”
The article goes on to warn Tuchel he will need to be thicker-skinned to handle the “brutal British TV pundit hell of Carragher, Neville and Lineker” after some terse exchanges as his Bayern tenure collapsed. It finishes much as it started: “Good luck, Tuchel! But not too much…
“Dream scenario from a German perspective: Tuchel leads England to their first World Cup final since 1966 – and Nagelsmann wins with Germany in a penalty shoot-out because the last England penalty bounces off the bottom of the crossbar and onto the line. Deal?”
As German football expert Constantin Eckner tells i, Tuchel’s reputation in Germany has been seriously impacted by his trophy-less season with Bayern Munich.
“His stint at Bayern didn’t do him many favours, He wasn’t on the best of terms with some of the players and the decision was made to end the relationship very prematurely, months before the end of season,” Eckner explains.
“There are some people in Germany who don’t think of Tuchel very highly. Of course others acknowledge he is a great tactician and a great football mind, but a bit of a difficult character sometimes.”
“If things don’t go well and he’s under pressure and criticised, he can go on the offensive and be tense and get irritated quite easily. It’s all in the context.
“There were times when he started at Bayern, the first couple of months, he did quite well. When things go well he’s very charming and he’s everybody’s darling, and people speak very highly of him. It’s a bit of a mixed bag.”
Tuchel is an avowed Anglophile who admitted earlier this year he feels more appreciated in England than Germany. He hoped to stay in London after his Chelsea sacking, but couldn’t secure the necessary visa.
There are also plenty of references to Tuchel’s pursuit of English players while at Bayern. He signed Harry Kane and Eric Dier, but also made offers for Kyle Walker and Declan Rice, which reportedly made him particularly unpopular in Munich, not least because English players are viewed as overpriced.
“It’s a bit different,” Eckner says. “He comes off differently when he’s speaking in German – he tries to be very accurate and read a lot between the lines.
“When he was at Bayern, having grown up very near to Munich it was something of a dream for him, but sometimes people do better away from home. Even at Bayern, he joked around with English journalists but not so much with German journalists. Working and speaking in your second language might give you a different kind of spark.”
Multiple articles reference comments Bayern’s honorary president Uli Hoeness made earlier this week. He called Tuchel’s tenure “a catastrophe” and said the club “lost entertainment value” on the pitch.
Yet more often than not, these are accompanied by sympathetic points about Bayern’s off-field issues and unbalanced squad, suggesting that for all the criticism of Tuchel, there’s an understanding that failure wasn’t solely his fault.
Weekly magazine Der Spiegel was far fairer than its tabloid counterpart on the reasons for England hiring Tuchel, saying: “English football is more globalised than German football, the clubs are often in the hands of foreign owners and they employ the best coaches in the industry.
“Recently, they have rarely come from Great Britain. The only current Premier League coach at a club with European Cup ambitions is Newcastle’s Eddie Howe. He is yet to win a major title.
“And that is exactly what the English FA is all about – end their drought since their World Cup success in 1966. Tuchel can be trusted to do that.”
But an underlying sense of inquiring scepticism is never too far away. Even the Suddeutsche Zeitung – one of the nation’s leading quality newspapers – wrote: “The long uncrowned motherland of football has been waiting for a men’s title since its only home World Cup victory in 1966.
“A German coach – of all people – is now set to fulfil this longing of the English.”
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/QEUbmgS
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