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Thursday, December 24, 2020
Coach vs. Construct PSG
Thomas Tuchel meets Qatar
A comment from David Needy
Thomas Tuchel is considered complicated and angry, in Paris Saint-Germain he messes with the sports director Leonardo. In the end, however, the manager was fired because he stumbled into the structure of PSG and the Qatari owners did not trust him to achieve great European success.
Now Thomas Tuchel has it too. In the Qatari era, Paris Saint-Germain parted ways with their fifth manager. Tuchel’s dismissal is probably the most surprising, but there have always been signs of the decision from PSG bosses. In the end, the German coach falls for the dispute with his sports director, for his own words and for the sole objective pursued by the owners of the Qatari club.
Tuchel was as close as anyone before him: Champions League final. Parisians have been dreaming since the club was acquired by the state-owned Qatari Sports Investments in 2011. Tuchel narrowly missed. In an exciting final in the summer of 2020, they only lost 1-0 to the triple winner of Munich. For the owners of Qatar nothing else counts than the great triumph in the premier class, which is why they have never kept a secret.
After the poor results of the league and third place before the turn of the year, the emirate no longer trusted Tuchel with this success. At the time, his engagement was made at the personal request of Qatar’s head of state, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. The plan to win the Champions League has always been part of a broader attempt to improve the image of the emirate with a miserable human rights record through sport and to make the desert state better known and recognized.
Tuchel collides with Qatari construction
Tuchel collided with this plan. Recognition was lost for his very good performance with the team (two champions, cups, CL final). The coach denounced the extreme expectations at the club, after all, he had notably developed PSG in his two and a half years and was only one game before the big blow. “We never had the feeling that we have now convinced people and that they recognize our performance,” Tuchel said in an interview published the day before on Sport1. “It also makes you a little sad or angry sometimes.” The club shouldn’t have liked the words at all. Even less for Qatari owners.
The emirate, in which equality between women and men is not even close on paper, people are discriminated against on the basis of religion, sexual self-determination or sexual orientation and in which the exploitation of migrant workers is systematically persecuted, opened step into soccer. First in Paris, but then also at the European level. Thus it was possible to advance to the final of the queen category. But the cloth fought. “I don’t know if it always has to be taller, taller, taller,” he said in the same interview. “I just like football. And in a club like this, it’s not always just football.”
Of course, the coach loves being on the sidelines as much as anyone else during the Champions League anthem. In fact, it is a bit addictive, he admitted. But all the construction of PSG, the construction of Qatar, made him think more and more. He does not want to be a sports minister or sports politician, he said. In the Paris club, with Qatar as the owner, you are never just a coach. For every coach in the world, the billion-dollar structure in the French capital is a risk – Tuchel has now run into it.
Fighting with Leonardo
Anyway, there has been speculation about the removal of the German coach. That was also due to his fight with sports director Leonardo. The Brazilian did not extend the contract of captain and defensive boss Thiago Silva, which upset Tuchel. And rightly so when you see the defender’s best performance at his new employer, Chelsea FC. Tuchel Leonardo was also responsible for the departures of Adil Aouchiches, Edinson Cavanis, Thomas Meuniers and Eric Maxim Choupo-Motings. The athletic director never complied with his transfer requests, or was only late.
Tuchel also considers himself too perfectionist, angry, unreasonable. Simply: too complicated. He also parted ways with BVB in 2017 in a dispute, sparring with the bosses over dealing with the attack on the team bus ahead of a Champions League match. He lost the support of the players through public statements about them. Of course, the coach touched the megastars Neymar and Mbappé more gently, but no confession of love for their coach was heard from their mouths either.
Parisian fans have not loved Tuchel for a long time due to his sometimes cross and slightly grumpy manners. But then he reached the final of the Champions League. But that was not enough for the Qatari sheiks.
