Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel were furious with each other. It was March 2011 and Tuchel’s Mainz had just scored a late equaliser against Klopp’s Dortmund, having played on while Neven Subotic lay on the floor hurt.
Klopp, furious at the apparent lack of sportsmanship, raced his way to the Mainz bench to confront Tuchel, pushing over a masseur as he did so.
‘You saw Subotic lying there, and you didn’t give a s***,’ the Dortmund coach fumed at Tuchel in the TV studio after the game. It was, to say the least, a low point in the two men’s relationship.
Jurgen Klopp is set to take on Thomas Tuchel once again when Liverpool host PSG
Tuchel and Klopp have had similar paths in football but as people, they are very different
Tuchel replaced Klopp as manager of Mainz and then Borussia Dortmund before his PSG move
Seven and a half years later, all that is long forgotten. As Klopp and Tuchel prepare to meet each other again in tonight’s mouth-watering Champions League clash, the Liverpool coach has only praise for his Paris Saint-Germain counterpart.
‘It was a smart decision from PSG to sign Tuchel,’ said Klopp. ‘He is an outstanding coach.’
Both Klopp and Tuchel have come a long way since their touchline spat in 2011. Rising managerial stars in Germany, they were both relatively unknown internationally back then. Now, they are both European dugout superstars.
Klopp is at the helm of a Liverpool side who reached the Champions League Final last year and have made their best start to a season in nearly three decades. Tuchel is charged with delivering the Champions League title at PSG, and is armed with a boggling array of global superstars.
Tuesday sees European royalty take on the nouveau riche favourites. It is a clash of two of Europe’s most expensively constructed squads. But it is also a clash between two coaches whose fates seem forever intertwined.
The similarities between the two men have long been seductive. Both, as their spat in 2011 showed, are animated figures on the touchline. Both are tactical innovators, forerunners in a golden generation of young German coaches. Most importantly, both followed exactly the same route to the top.
In the build-up to their match, Klopp said PSG were ‘smart’ to appoint Tuchel as manager
Klopp defeated Tuchel and Dortmund in an infamous Europa League tie two years ago
Tuchel’s rise to stardom in Klopp’s shadow is well documented. His first break came at Mainz, just a year after Klopp had left the club for Dortmund. Then, in 2015, he followed in Klopp’s footsteps again, taking over at Dortmund after the Klopp era had imploded.
‘I think I now know where I’m going next,’ joked Tuchel a few months later, when Klopp was announced as Liverpool coach.
Now, though, he is at PSG, and eager to finally step out of Klopp’s shadow. For while the similarities are undeniable, the differences between the two men are often overlooked.
In his first year at Mainz, Tuchel was celebrated as a perfect Klopp replacement, a pally, down to earth kind of figure who played an electrifying brand of football. Yet in the coming years, that narrative would be debunked. On the pitch, Tuchel’s style was always a far cry from Klopp’s.
Though he also relied on irresistible, swarming attacks, Tuchel’s philosophy was not ‘heavy metal football’ based on the key element of Gegenpressing, it was a more intricate masterpiece of tactical precision, in which possession played a far more significant role.
Off the pitch, too, the comparisons eventually faded.
Tuchel, once nicknamed the ‘Brain Coach’ by Die Zeit, proved to be less approachable than Klopp. His tactical erudition often made him seem arrogant and aloof, which soured certain relationships. While Klopp received a hero’s farewell at both Mainz and Dortmund, Tuchel left both clubs under a cloud.
The closeness of their relationship has also been overstated in some quarters. While he followed the same path, Tuchel was never Klopp’s student per se, and it was with Pep Guardiola, not Klopp, that he famously spent a glorious afternoon discussing tactics in a restaurant.
From that angle, both men are now in their ideal jobs. Klopp the cult hero is at a club which needs his natural instincts when it comes to emotion, identity and warmth. Tuchel the tactical tinkerer is finally in an environment where he is no longer measured against Klopp, and has everything at his disposal to realise his own vision.
Both Klopp and Tuchel appear to be in their perfect jobs at Liverpool and PSG respectively
Tuchel is leading a side whose priority is to win the Champions League as soon as possible
Tuesday will be a chance for Tuchel to shake off Klopp, but it is not his first opportunity to do so.
Back in 2016, Liverpool’s dramatic Europa League tie with Dortmund started and ended with Kloppmania, as Dortmund fans welcomed their returning hero under a stadium-wide chorus of You’ll Never Walk Alone, before Klopp’s battering ram grabbed a late victory in the second leg. Emotion, heavy metal, won the day.
Now with the likes of Kylian Mbappé and Neymar at his disposal, Tuchel is hoping that cool-headed precision will have its hour. This time, there should be no touchline spats.