All wins with Chelsea
Thomas Tuchel is still grateful for the talks with Pep Guardiola. “There are these special encounters, and that with Pep is part of it. I learn from his teams,” said the FC Bayern coach ahead of Bayern Munich’s quarter-final first leg on Tuesday (9 p.m.) in the Champions League against Manchester City. “But I’m not a fanboy. We’ll do everything we can to get a good result and put our stamp on the game.”
At that time, Tuchel was studying as an aspiring coach at FC Barcelona under Guardiola, later he met him during his time at Bayern. Tuchel’s record is negative: he could only win three out of ten games with a draw. He achieved all of these victories as Chelsea coach against the Spaniard at Man City, including in the 2021 Champions League final.
But Tuchel didn’t care about this balance on Tuesday evening, just as the preparation was “not a philosophy lesson about Barcelona”. “What counts is City’s last four weeks. We analyzed them thoroughly.” In three meetings, two on the day of the match, he wants to prepare his team for this duel.
On the eve of the game, Tuchel not only emphasized his thanks to Guardiola. “There was such an encounter with Jupp Heynckes, and that also had a big impact on me,” revealed Tuchel, who was hired to succeed Julian Nagelsmann almost three weeks ago. Heynckes won the treble with Bayern in 2013.
Coach with the most semi-final appearances in the Champions League
The Catalan had previously revealed how much Guardiola Tuchel appreciates. “He’s definitely one of the best coaches. He did good work everywhere: in Germany, in Paris, in England. I’m very happy to see him again,” said Guardiola. “It’s a completely different game than against PSG. I’m sure there will be moments when we will suffer. But we also want to have moments where we want to play on them and hurt them. We have the characteristics and the talent in the squad,” said Tuchel. While the Munich team is the third most valuable team in the world with a squad value of 980 million euros, Man City occupies the top spot with 1.05 billion euros first place in an international comparison.
To home page