Thomas Tuchel is the ultimate cup manager – an inverse Gareth Southgate

England’s new man is tactically astute and an adopter of left-field methods; Plus, analysing three of the German’s strategic masterclasses

By appointing Thomas Tuchel as the new England manager, the Football Association has effectively recruited a coach who is the opposite of Gareth Southgate. Tuchel’s areas of weakness are Southgate’s areas of strength, and the reverse is also true: where Southgate proved lacking, Tuchel has historically excelled.
This is most obviously the case when it comes to their respective tactical nous. The biggest and fairest criticism of Southgate was that he was unable to bend the biggest matches to his will, to change the flow of a game with a tactical switch or a stylistic tweak. In back-to-back European Championship finals, he was outwitted by his Italian and Spanish counterparts.
Tuchel, by contrast, arrives at Wembley as one of the most astute tactical minds in the sport. He may not be able to oversee a long-term cultural rebuild as Southgate did, and he is certainly more likely to fall out with the FA’s executives, but the German is among the best in the world at conjuring a unique game-plan to win a specific match.
Tuchel’s CV provides clear evidence of his genius in cup competitions. He won the German Cup with Borussia Dortmund, lifted the French Cup and French League Cup with Paris St-Germain and then won the Champions League, Super Cup and Club World Cup with Chelsea.
At PSG, he led a famously unreliable team to their first ever Champions League final. At Stamford Bridge, he reached the final of the League Cup and two consecutive FA Cups. Last season, with Bayern Munich, he endured a difficult league campaign but still came within two minutes of another Champions League final.
Tuchel’s greatest managerial achievement was his triumph over Pep Guardiola in the Champions League final of 2021. Guardiola was so out-thought, and so unable to break down Chelsea’s flexible 3-4-2-1 shape, that his Manchester City side did not have a single shot on target after the seventh minute.
Chelsea’s route to the final that season included comprehensive knockout victories over Atletico Madrid, Porto and Real Madrid. In those six matches, Tuchel’s side conceded only two goals.
“He’s so creative,” Guardiola said of Tuchel in 2022. “[He is] one of the few managers I learn constantly from to develop as a better manager.”
Chelsea mostly played with a back three under Tuchel but it would be a mistake to assume he is wedded to one system. Outside of his time in the Premier League, he has largely favoured a back four, with a fluid and changeable attacking shape ahead of those defenders.
The key to Tuchel’s tactical brilliance is his adaptability. The 51-year-old has different plans for different games and, crucially, is able to execute those plans with limited preparation time. He is not afraid to drop big names for big matches, or indeed to deploy a player in an unfamiliar position when it is required.
Against Real Madrid in 2022, for example, Tuchel picked Chelsea midfielder Ruben Loftus-Cheek as a wing-back. Last season, against Arsenal, he identified Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka as the English side’s biggest threats and then nullified them by selecting an unusual Bayern team that featured two full-backs on the left wing.
Tuchel’s European record shows his tactical versatility. In his Champions League coaching career he has used five different formations at least five times, regularly switching between a back three and a back four. Almost a third of his Champions League matches have been approached with a three-man defence. By comparison, fellow German manager Jurgen Klopp has only ever used a back four in the Champions League.
In order to instil this flexibility into his players, Tuchel uses a variety of unusual methods on the training pitches. At Chelsea, they were known to occasionally train with miniature footballs. In Germany, his defenders sometimes trained while holding tennis balls, to prevent them from grabbing opponents.
“You need A-Levels for some of these exercises,” Eugen Polanski, who played for Tuchel at Mainz, once said about the coach’s complex drills. At his press conference on Wednesday, Tuchel spoke of installing “patterns, behaviours and principles” from the club game, to help “push the team over the line”.
Tuchel’s managerial career shows he is far more effective at managing cup competitions than an entire league campaign. This should, in theory, make him well-suited to international football.
It would be fair to assume, too, that his combustible nature – which contrasts so sharply with Southgate’s more measured approach – will be less problematic in an international setting. There will be no squabbles over transfer targets, for example.
It is on the grass, rather than in meeting rooms, where Tuchel produces his best work. England have come so close to success in recent years, and the feeling has often been that they have lacked the required tactical acumen in the crucial moments. Tuchel may not be to everyone’s taste but there is no doubt he possesses that edge.
Champions League semi-final, August 2020Tuchel finds a way to get the best out of his illustrious forwards, playing a narrow and disciplined midfield three which becomes a four when Neymar drops deep. Angel Di Maria and Kylian Mbappe provide speed in attack, while the full-backs offer width, as PSG terrorise Leipzig.
Champions League final, May 2021With a back three and two holding midfielders, Chelsea are compact and organised in the centre of the pitch against Pep Guardiola’s City. Attacking midfielders Mason Mount and Kai Havertz also help to reinforce the narrow defensive structure of the team, with the width coming from wing-backs instead of the forwards. City cannot find a way through.
Champions League quarter-final, April 2024Tuchel deploys two left-backs, Noussair Mazraoui and Raphael Guerreiro, to shut down Arsenal’s right side of Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard. Defender Eric Dier and midfielders Konrad Laimer and Jamal Musiala also shift towards the left side of the pitch, to deny Arsenal any space in that area.
It works to spectacular effect, with Saka having one of his most difficult nights of the entire season. High-flying Arsenal had only three shots on target as Joshua Kimmich headed the winner for Bayern Munich.
Few sides play with two strikers but Tuchel could be the man to make it work. A strikeforce of Kane and Watkins would have a nice balance, but could the rest of the team work around them?
A familiar 4-2-3-1 shape (below) for England, and one that the players will no doubt be comfortable with. This is probably the system that feels the most natural to England’s best players, and to Tuchel himself. 
Tuchel used this formation to great effect at Chelsea, although he might feel it does not suit the players at his disposal. Wingers such as Bukayo Saka, for example, would have to adjust to an unfamiliar role.