Thomas Tuchel has won 11 trophies during his managerial career, but his popularity varies drastically for Chelsea, Bayern Munich, and Paris Saint-Germain fans.
The new England boss is most well-known for his 2021 Champions League win for the Blues, and despite being sacked by Chelsea owner Todd Boehly, the German is revered in West London.
However, Tuchel was a polarising figure for the French and German giants, and his reputation is harder to decipher.
Speaking to prominent fans of all three clubs, it is clear Tuchel will need to warm to England fans through his charisma, while getting the Three Lions playing the winning football he’s produced for the last decade.
Chelsea fan, journalist, and owner of CFCnewspage Nathan Gissing said: “I think I can speak on behalf of every Chelsea fan when I say that those 19 months were some of the best ever.
“And after he was the voice of the club during Roman Abramovich’s sanctions, it was devastating to see him leave.”
As well as the Champions League final victory, where Tuchel masterminded a 1-0 win over Premier League rivals Manchester City, the 51-year-old won the UEFA Super Cup and the Club World Cup, as well as reaching two more major finals.
It’s this knack for knockout football which Gissing highlighted as Tuchel’s main strength.
He said: “You can’t get a better manager than Tuchel for knockout football.
“If you’re not solid defensively, you don’t stand a chance, and you can expect a tough game when you come up against Thomas.
“England men haven’t won a trophy since 1966. Football is about winning, and Tuchel’s a winner.
“If I was a gambling man, I’d put good money on England winning the World Cup.”
Tuchel’s most recent club appointment was at Bayern, where he won the 2022-23 Bundesliga title but was sacked less than a year later after disappointing results.
FC Bayern UK Fan Club deputy manager and online admin Chafic Kaedbey had sympathy for Tuchel given Bayern’s surprise sacking of Julian Nagelsmann, but blamed the German’s personality for his downfall.
Kaedbey said: “Tuchel wasn’t very popular, not because of his Borussia Dortmund connections, but his personality. He’s a difficult person to deal with.
“If you look throughout his history, he’s been repulsive over that time. He’s a very tactical person, but Bayern is more of a family.
“Bayern have always focused on possession, but this was not Tuchel’s style. As a result, we saw some of the worst games ever for Bayern.
“I’ve never seen them lack a reaction to bad games so often.
“But it was not fair for him in the beginning, as the fans viewed Nagelsmann’s dismissal as unfair.”
Tuchel had public fallouts with squad stalwarts Joshua Kimmich and Leon Goretzka, before troubles surfaced with Dayot Upamecano, Kim Min-Jae, and Matias De Ligt, which went down poorly with the German media.
However, Gissing saw this Bayern failure differently.
He said: “I saw no problems with Tuchel at Chelsea, everyone loved him including the ownership, Petr Cech, and the players.
“At Bayern, there were too many cooks in the kitchen, and it caused a lot of unnecessary drama.
“He prefers English media to the German media, and given it’s just pure coaching, we’ll see the best of Thomas.”
Arguably Tuchel’s most successful spell came in France, where he won a domestic treble with PSG in 2019, and five trophies in total.
A Champions League final defeat to future team Bayern was a regret for Tuchel, but PSG Club London members Hugo Coll and Thomas were thankful for Tuchel’s time in the French capital.
Coll said: “He’s the only coach that managed to bring us to the Champions League final, the dream for us PSG fans.
“He was not easy to deal with because of his strong character, but that can be a quality because you need a coach that can raise his voice against some types of players, like Neymar and Kylian Mbappé.
“Maybe that’s what England needs to manage all the talents that Southgate couldn’t.”
Thomas also believes international football might suit Tuchel.
He said: “He wanted full power over signings, and he struggled to communicate with the journalists, but international football will work for him.
“He can select the players he wants without worrying about transfers. He was a master at exploiting the opponent’s weaknesses, and playing to our strengths, which is what England needs.
“They wanted someone with more character. This is Thomas Tuchel.”
While Tuchel will work hard to keep the media onside about his past character problems, he might find it harder to overcome the foreign manager narrative.
Only native managers have won the World Cup before, and the German is already facing question marks over his passport.
Kaedbey said: “It’s a risk, and time will tell, and since he’s not English, the pressure and controversy has already started from the media.
Gissing echoed this when he said: “There’ll be pressure because he’s not English. I can already see the headlines if he loses a game, ‘Why do we appoint a German manager?’.
“But he’s the best available, and there aren’t any world-class English managers at the moment.”
Despite the mixed opinions on Thomas Tuchel’s time across Europe, it appears the fan bases have a mutual appreciation for what he could do for England’s 2026 World Cup dreams.
Picture credit: Used from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons 3.0 license
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