Whatever happens next at Chelsea, there is a clear priority: keep Tuchel | Barney Ronay

ANAt 9:50 p.m. on Tuesday, the Chelsea players met on the Bernabéu sideline to prepare for extra time, which had just won real Madrid 3-1 in their own stadium for 90 minutes: a sensational solo result, but now also with a hint of dread, a feeling of having run to exhaustion in search of a retreating mirage.

Rodrygo’s goal 10 minutes from the end of regulation time will be remembered for Luka Modric’s sublime diagonal pass, a strange, meandering, submerged thing, like an entity from another physical plane. But the effect of that goal on the opposition was also surprising.

there was still time to Thomas Tuchel to send Christian Pulisic, and for Pulisic to miss the opportunity of death that would have rewritten in an instant every version of this extraordinary game, recast Madrid’s dynastic will to power as a decadent amour-propre, altered the trajectory of seasons and careers, and anointed Tuchel once and for all as the tactical great white whale of West London.

The difference with Madrid, however, the great secret, is that they usually take advantage of those moments.

And so came half an hour of suffering. But the breakout was also box office in its own right. Antonio Rüdiger barked and patted the shoulders. For a while, two middle-aged men in club sweats crouched behind Reece James and furiously smacked him on the buttocks: a vital job, so vital in fact that a third man briefly walked over and joined them.

In the midst of this, Tuchel gathered his players into a tight circle and delivered a flowing two-minute speech, his hands slicing through the air, jumping from foot to foot, reproducing even in the ungainly physicality of his lively talk the movements, the shapes, the moving texture of his team’s performance.

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With a day of grace, and even in pleasantly sulky defeat, the image of Tuchel buried within that circle seems to capture something vital. Not just about his effect on the Chelsea players; but also the reciprocal nature of that relationship, the energy, the drive injected into his own career.

There is no doubt that Tuchel’s star has risen dramatically in England. Especially in the last two months as the public face of a struggling asset, roaming this collapsing seat of power like one of nature’s dukes, bow tie crooked, dusting off his lapels.

Two things seem certain as this ghost ship season heads into Sunday’s FA Cup semi-final. First, whichever consortium ends up buying chelsea he needs to base his entire strategy in the early years on keeping Tuchel at the club.

Of this there is no immediate doubt, beyond the occasional casual whisper (and there are always whispers). Tuchel’s contract runs until 2024. He remains in his own imperial phase, revered for the support of the club and under the skin of this group of players. But there is still flow here. Even the last member of the current hierarchy will surely leave with the change of owners. Soccer is a peculiar beast. And Tuchel is, at the moment, Chelsea’s brightest star presence.

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There is also another side to that ledger. It’s easy to forget that this googly-eyed superbrain, a man who now seems born to fidget, sing and finger-play on the Chelsea touchline in his pale blue quilted coat, was also in need of a home when he arrived at Stamford Bridge.

Tuchel was a success at Borussia Dortmund but left under a cloud, the subject of a casual character assassination by CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke, who questioned his “core values” – from communication skills to loyalty and trust. So, only those then. He took Paris Saint-Germain to a bit of a strange place. Final of the Champions League fucked by the Covid but then he was happily waved off and greeted by that rather sick group of players, a match that could probably work as a character reference as well.

Here was an elite coach whose star had sunk, who seemed to still be finding a level, a way to work in this company. In that sense, Chelsea have been perfect for Tuchel. When he showed up, the team was brimming with talent, but also tactically incoherent, marred with Lampard-ism. The ostracized talented and familiar players were perfectly prepared to high five back into the fold. All of this was ripe fruit for a man whose entire life revolves around granular tactical details.

Tuchel comforts Reece James at the end of Tuesday's epic battle at the Bernabéu.
Tuchel comforts Reece James at the end of Tuesday’s epic battle at the Bernabéu. Photography: Jose Breton/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

What has become clear is that Tuchel likes to work in a state of total concentration, arranging and modifying at high speed, without external distractions; and that arriving at Chelsea in the middle of the season was the kind of impossible job that suited his talent.

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The same might even apply to the mind-boggling oddities of the last couple of months: unwanted and clearly unsettling, but in a weird way that also suits Tuchel’s best qualities, his eloquence, his basic honesty.

For a time in March, the Chelsea manager seemed to have become the UK’s most consistent public voice on the war in Ukraine, revered for his ability to tell a few simple truths. At BT Sport, Jake Humphrey had a habit of cutting off Tuchel’s post-match comments as if he were broadcasting an address to the galactic resistance from Yoda’s cave. Joe Cole suggested that Tuchel should become prime minister, and it didn’t really sound like a joke.

If there was a tendency to swoon over Tuchel’s ability simply to keep the season going, it’s worth noting that his success, even in that first year, was based on that ability to completely focus on the details right under his nose, to block non-essential pressure, to lure your players into that same bubble.

By contrast, asking Tuchel to manage a team of A-list superstars, to deal with Neymar’s princely whims on a daily basis, always seemed like an absurd hire. Tuchel may be a more playful and convincing strategist than Carlo Ancelotti. But can anyone really imagine him getting the same results in charge of Real Madrid? Or succeed at any of those clubs where saying less is saying more, where intense, non-negotiable tactical details are essentially an act of self-sabotage?

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Tuchel is a coach, not an entrepreneur, the kind of high-performance obsessive who will flourish in the right soil. It seems telling that his clearest failure at Chelsea has been his inability to attract more or none of Romelu Lukaku, the closest thing to a superstar player, at least in his own mind, in the team.

Like Mauricio Pochettino, his best moments will probably always come from driving in a team of energetic and docile players at a level just below outright superstars. He remains Chelsea’s most prized asset. But this is also a question of chemistry, of mutual dependency. More than pledged Lords, pledged funds, or pledged followers, preserving that balance will be absolutely vital to the success of the latest new age.

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