Pep Guardiola already knows what that Cup is and Thomas Tuchel has seen it very closely, but he could not catch it. This is none other than the Orejona, the Champions League trophy, which will be played this Saturday by Manchester City and Chelsea with both at the head of the two teams.
This week, Tuchel and Guardiola will each be on a bench, but not so long ago they shared glasses of wine and a table in one of Munich's best-known bars with Michael Reschke as host and luxury guest. Both partners in the bar will play, coincidentally, the best cup in Europe.
ANDThese, but in their glass version, Reschke assures in The Athletic that they moved fluently around the table when he brought the two together for the first time in the Schumanns bar, located in Odeonsplatz, in the heart of the Bavarian city. Pep was still a Bayern manager and Tuchel was on a sabbatical after coaching a Mainz that Guardiola himself liked when he faced him. This respect for Tuchel's approaches led him to appear almost unexpectedly at the bar when Reschke told him that he had met him.
The one who was Bayern's technical director tells how those appointments were. “It was like watching two chess masters, Fischer versus Spassky, or Cicero and Socrates discussing the philosophy of football. They talked about games that happened years ago while moving pepper mills and wine glasses. They were capable of reproducing matches from years ago down to the smallest detail. Tuchel asked him about games in 2009 and how he moved the wings … “, explains Reschke.
Tuchel had been a student of Pep's method, going to Barcelona to see his team and even devouring every book that came out about the Catalan coach. Thus, in the double confrontation between Mainz and Bayern in Guardiola's first year in the Bundesliga, Tuchel earned their admiration. “Pep admired him for playing as he played with a team with limitations and for the precision with which he did it,” says the former sports director that the Catalan coach felt for the now Chelsea manager.
The level of the conversation, according to he himself narrates, rose until Reschke himself got lost. “I was a spectator. They spoke something between German and English. They didn't use any overly technical terms, but it was hard to keep up with them. They were so wrapped up in their conversation for four hours that no one at the bar, not even the waiters, dared to approach. SI always thought I knew something about football, but I was no longer so sure, “adds the former sports director of many German clubs that, he confesses, came to” feel like an epiphany. “
The two, Reschke says, share many similarities. “I am very demanding with their players and they get along better with those who think the game as deeply as they do. Those who want to play their own football often have difficulties. Tactically, both seek to dominate although Thomas is more technocratic and Pep more artist “, sentence.
An admiration that is almost worth a job
Guardiola liked Tuchel so much, that he ended up passing his resume to Bayern when he already knew he would leave. According to The Athletic, Reschke, Uli Hoeness, president of Bayern and Tuchel came to meet so that this was the coach to succeed Pep at the head of Bayern, but the moment indicates that it was not the suitable one.