The decisive factors as to whether Real Madrid or Bayern Munich advance to the Champions League final at Wembley will be team tactics and who, of all the magnificent players on show at the Bernabeu, choose Wednesday night to underline their cold-blooded brilliance and overwhelming desire to make their club champions of Europe. But there will be another sideshow that, though perhaps less obvious on the night, has been central to how these sides have fared in their domestic seasons and in reaching this potentially explosive and epic semifinal, which is beautifully balanced at 2-2.
In Carlo Ancelotti and Thomas Tuchel, you literally couldn’t find two elite football coaches so polemically opposed in almost everything: how they behave on the touchline, how they choose to speak about their players, how they man-manage a squad and how they embrace a corrosive, abrasive atmosphere or a collegiate, mutually supportive culture as more likely to forge greatness.
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I’ll come back to the affable, easygoing Ancelotti in a moment, but suffice to say, the Italian’s text on sports management is titled “Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts and Minds and Matches,” and one key statement in that book is this: “Remember, there are no great coaches or leaders. They are only as great as the talent they seduce and lead and how much permission this talent gives them on a daily basis to deliver their ideas.” The most aggressive action you’ll find in Ancelotti’s part of the touchline is the brutal action of his jaw, while he chews incalculable amounts of gum, and a single eyebrow arched to show unhappiness as it seemingly tries to escape off the top of his brow like a caterpillar on the run.
Tuchel is fury in a bottle. His style is somewhere between encouragement and excoriation, though not necessarily in equal doses. Watch him intently at the Bernabeu this week if you’ve never done so before.
Before I share a personal anecdote about the German’s abrasive “collateral damage” vocabulary, let’s be clear about one thing: Tuchel is a quite exceptional football strategist and coach. There are few who are as tactically bright, alert or resourceful as he is. That’s not up for debate here. In fact, it’s arguable that in pure tactical terms, he might have the edge on Ancelotti. But back to my first meeting with Tuchel, which happened in Berlin nearly nine years ago.
Following a brilliant exposition on how radically his view on youth development had changed, plus a passionate description of what kind of “hell” it was for him, as Dortmund coach, to pit his team against Pep Guardiola’s Bayern, I approached him and asked for more details about his communicative ideas. He told me an anecdote about showing his players a video of a singer he deemed “ugly” and saying to them: “See how she looks! If someone like her can go out fearlessly, stand in front of a huge audience and show her talent brilliantly, then there’s no excuse for any of you to be fearful or intimidated when you go out to play!”
It was an arresting and illuminating story. For the purposes of getting through to his players, he’d absolutely no qualms in describing an artist in crude terms, nor had he the slightest worry about confidently telling me, on a first meeting, an anecdote with such a repugnant theme.
If this doesn’t strike you as having the effect of hanging your players out to dry, then perhaps his repeated criticism of defender Kim Min-jae since the first leg against Madrid last week does the trick.
The 27-year-old South Korea international, still in his first season at Bayern and fresh off a brilliant season with Napoli, was at fault in both Madrid goals, prompting Tuchel to sound off. “He was too ambitious — twice. He made the first move too early against Vinicius in the first goal and was caught by Toni Kroos’ pass. Too speculative, too aggressive. The second goal, unfortunately, was another mistake. We were five against two, we had the numbers: there was no need to defend that aggressively against Rodrygo. He brought him down just at the moment Eric [Dier] was about to help!”
Accurate, maybe … but harsh to say it in public? You’ll have your views.
Former New York Red Bulls/Chicago Fire coach Juan Carlos Osorio had his perspective: “I prefer what Sir Alex Ferguson said on this: it’s better to teach the team to defend better in a unified way than to ‘kill’ your central defender like this … it seemed abusive by Tuchel to me.”
