The life of a maestro is a torturous existence. Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel may well be two of finest minds in football, bouncing ideas off each other at their summit meetings in Germany back in the day. Yet they also appear among the most troubled at times.
Tuchel, with all the sartorial elegance of an ultra-marathon runner in legging tracksuit top and standard-issue corporate-logo baseball cap, rarely appears happy at the best of times spending much of a game throwing hands in the air, spinning round to his bench and venting a volley of Germanic frustrations.
Here though he reached peak exasperation, a gurning, frowning ball of vexation. Here was the first heavyweight clash of the season between two of three teams who will surely challenge for the title. Tuchel came into the game in the ascendancy. His personal head-to-head with Guardiola since arriving in England was 3-0 in his favour, the last win being the Champions League final in Porto. As such, you might expect his team to muster a shot on goal.
Pep Guardiola took the latest victory in his tactical sparring with Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel.
Pep Guardiola took the latest victory in his tactical sparring with Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel
Manchester City were triumphant at Stamford Bridge in another tight tactical spectacle
Instead he approached the game like a man who had enjoyed a run of wins at Monte Carlo and was now content to stick with his winnings rather than twist and go for broke.
‘We played a little bit like we had something to lose,’ said Tuchel. ‘There was nothing to lose. After [we conceded] the goal there was a bit more energy, a good reaction and a lot of risk. But you had the feeling that this is the type of mentality that you need from the very start that you take risk, you accept risk. And that was not the case today. They made us underperform.’
Hard to argue with that. Except that much of the responsibility lay at the door of the coach, which, in fairness, he accepted.
These might be the best two teams in the world and as such, the room for error is negligible.
It’s early season, Chelsea already had three points on City at the start and Tuchel seemed to adapt the mantra: ‘What we have we hold.’ Mason Mount was injured but even so a midfield of Jorginho, N’Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic is as solid as you can get in world football. Add in a back three and wing backs who usually play full back, set up 3-5-2 and you would pity the team asked with breaking that down.
Tuchel spent the match restless and frustrated as he urged his Chelsea team up the field
Pep Guardiola had lost three matches in a row to Tuchel and finally got the best of his rival.
Even the combined talents of Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, Jack Grealish and Phil Foden weren’t experiencing much joy initially. That they would get their eventually was due to the determination of Bernardo and Gabriel Jesus. But it wasn’t a festival of football. City dominated utterly, but only when the game opened up after the opening goal did they look themselves. Chelsea, by contrast, never really looked like Tuchel’s Chelsea.
Romelu Lukaku was impotent alone up front, limited to a handful of touches in the first half. Timo Werner did run with the ball at times, but in a hurried slightly manic manner. And his selection these days is a sure-fire indicator that Chelsea want to use his pace on the break. You sense that when they feel they can carve a side open, he’s on the bench.
‘I don’t think it’s a matter of structure,’ said Tuchel. ‘It’s a matter of positions and intelligence in the opponents’ spaces. We win together and lose together and I will ask question also to myself was it the right shape?’
His fairness, his spasms of energy on the bench were chiefly directed to urging his side higher up the pitch. But the message he had sent with the selection he made had been caution first. Had he set up up 3-4-3 and you felt this might have been more of a contest.
The visitors forced the pressure and won nine corners as Chelsea’s back-line scrambled
Still, it’s hard to berate the reigning Champions League winning coach. When these two last met, it was Guardiola we berated for lacking defensive sensibilities. In Porto, his team were exposed on the counter attack. Here they barely allowed Chelsea the chance. But then, unlike in that final they had Rodri patrolling the midfield, Bernardo back to his best and Gabriel Jesus assiduous in pressing. How might he respond to those who said he had got it worng in Porto and right here?
‘They are right!’ he deadpanned, the glimmer of a smile forming in the corners of his lips, before describing Rodri as ‘exceptional’ and Bernardo as back to the best form he showed in 2019.
‘Nobody can deny they were excellent,’ said Tuchel. ‘Part of performance is to make the opponent under perform this is what City did today. They were stronger, sharper. We lacked belief and confidence to escape in the situations where it was possible to escape with every mistake we did, we lost more and more confidence.
The Chelsea manager cuts a constantly irritated figure but defends his players post-match
‘They made us defend deep. They are the most intensive team in the league in the opponents half but still they are only ten played and there are ways to escape the pressure. But not for us today. We were not at our highest level and so we cannot expect a result.’
Safety first doesn’t suit the character of this Chelsea team. They didn’t look themselves. As such, they conceded some vital early ground to City in what will surely be a fascinating three-way title race. At the end of it all, the two maestros embraced but neither smiled, though one looked as though the anguish had all been worthwhile.
City are back on terms with the Blues and its setup for a thrilling league title race this season
SOURCE: dailymail.co.uk