The text is an excerpt from the book “Thomas Tuchel: The Biography” by Daniel Meuren and Tobias Schächter
“Gersthofen, I mean,” says Julian Nagelsmann and thinks again. “Yes, but Gersthofen. But I don’t know how the game ended.” In January 2008, Nagelsmann had no idea that the beginning of his amazing coaching career would one day be associated with the small town of around 22,000 inhabitants in the Augsburg district and its TSV 1909 football club. At that time, the 20-year-old was sent to Gersthofen by the coach of the second team of FC Augsburg to observe opponents.
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Nagelsmann fought for a long time to continue his playing career, but had to accept that the knee injury meant the end of his dream of a Bundesliga career. His coach in the national league team of FCA can put himself in the shoes of the central defensive player. Eight years earlier he had to end his career at the age of 24. Nagelsmann’s trainer at the time was called: Thomas Tuchel.
Twelve years later, Tuchel is training the French champions Paris Saint-Germain, and Nagelsmann has moved from TSG Hoffenheim to RB Leipzig. In the semi-finals of the Champions League in Lisbon, they will meet on Tuesday (9 p.m. / live ticker SPIEGEL.de; TV: DAZN). And this duel might never have happened if they hadn’t met in Augsburg.
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In January 2008 the second team of the FCA plays in the national league, one of the next opponents is TSV Gersthofen. After training with the professionals from RB in September 2019, Nagelsmann remembers his first assignment from Tuchel: “That was funny, at the beginning I drove to opponents’ games with my wife today. She filmed with the hand-held camera, and I did I took notes at the same time. Slips of paper, pen and handheld camera – there was nothing more, “says Nagelsmann with a smile:” That had nothing to do with today’s video analysis. “
After the first game in a new role, the new FCA analyst presents his observations in the coaching room. They are just records. “I often watched the scenes beforehand, but then didn’t present any scenes to Thomas.” Nagelsmann is insecure and excited. If the recordings meet Tuchel’s expectations, he asks himself for two days before showing the trainer his results: “The first time I said to Thomas: I don’t know now whether that’s what you hoped for. It was yes, in great detail. That was really exciting for me because until then I hadn’t even thought about how a coach thinks: Suddenly it was important: What do they do with the ball? How do they do it defensively? “
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“He believed that I was talented”
Nagelsmann remembers Tuchel’s reaction as follows: “Thomas was impressed and told me that he had seen the opponent’s game and analyzed similar things.” From that moment on, Nagelsmann has had a new task: He will observe upcoming opponents of the Augsburg regional league team for Tuchel until the end of the season. “I was completely free, he just said it was important to get an overview of the opponent.”
Nagelsmann did not collect the records from that time, there is no folder that documents this work. More than a decade later, he cannot remember individual details. But Nagelsmann has not forgotten that his becoming a coach is very closely connected with this time in Augsburg and with Tuchel: “After scouting the opponents a few times, Thomas told me that I should become a coach if I could no longer play . He thinks I’m talented for it – by the way I tick and the way I speak. I should definitely try it. “
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The idea of becoming a coach is alien to Nagelsmann at first, but over the next few months he becomes more and more friends with the thought: “I didn’t feel that in me at all, I never had any intention of becoming a coach. I have but I am very happy that Thomas sees it that way. When it was then foreseeable that my playing career would actually no longer bear the fruits as I had hoped, and I studied business administration, I decided to become a coach. I knew that I want to sell something so that in the end it will be an idea, I never thought of that. And yes, you can say: Thomas actually brought me to it. “
It even went beyond that. When Nagelsmann’s contract in Augsburg expired in the summer of 2008, Tuchel gave him the tip that an assistant coach was being sought in the U17 at 1860 Munich. Nagelsmann finally switched to 1860 – and his amazing coaching career began.
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When Tuchel switched to FC Augsburg in 2005, after his time in Stuttgart he decided to devote himself entirely to the coaching profession and complete the last stage of training. But he comes to a club on the move that has just been promoted to the second division after a long absence. Tuchel is not only employed as an A youth coach, but also as a junior coordinator. His area of responsibility extends from the U23 with the player Nagelsmann, whom he later trains, down to the F-youth.
Even then, Nagelsmann noticed the unconditional desire to win in his young trainer in Augsburg. “Thomas had an extreme will to win! This forward defense of the Stuttgart school was already felt to be formative for him. He also had extreme self-confidence. I always had the impression that he knows what he can do and knows what he wants. He did not the impression of a newcomer, he was very determined in what he did and one who knows that he might be a great coach one day, “recalls Nagelsmann. “He was extremely perfectionist, prescribed almost every pass. He had a lot of players whom he coached a lot and kept yelling at, he was never calm during the game, he never left you alone.”
“You always had to concentrate very much if you wanted to do the training well. Even back then he played with us – relatively early – with a back three. He was also rarely satisfied with what we did. During the week, the training was on total overstimulation created so that the players perceive the processes on the weekend as easy in the game. It was important that it was complex, but not complicated, everyone had to understand the exercises. Complex means being flexible, “says Nagelsmann.
Tuchel’s training was definitely formative for him, says Nagelsmann, who – although a central midfielder – is also used by Tuchel in the three-man defense chain. On the journeys home from Augsburg to Munich, Nagelsmann often falls asleep on the train because training is so stressful on the head. “You never sat in Thomas’s dressing room and thought: Oh, today is Tuesday, we’ll do it there, and today it’s Wednesday, we’ll do it. You could never really adjust to what was coming. That was exciting and already formative for me because today as a coach I am following a similar approach. “
Arrive super well or not at all
Tuchel thinks a lot of the player Nagelsmann and challenges him strongly and with a loud and direct address. Many players later experience this in the Bundesliga, one can deal with this very direct tone, the other cannot. Tuchel already polarized with this approach as a youth coach. “He’s a coach who goes down very well, or not at all,” says Nagelsmann. “There are few people who see him in a neutral way. He polarizes! I and my wife always got on really well with him, we had a great relationship.” But Tuchel tends to overreact to mistakes in his fundamental focus on the sport of players whom he does not consider to be so worthy of support. “Back then in Augsburg, it was already the case that he got players off the pitch very early in the game if they didn’t perform as he had imagined – that happened a lot with Thomas,” says Nagelsmann.
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When Nagelsmann was a U19 trainer in Hoffenheim years later, he attended the training of the Mainz professionals under Tuchel. The two hadn’t been in contact until then: “It was exciting for me to see how he would react because we had clashed a few times in Augsburg. But the reunion was very warm and familiar, we exchanged ten minutes. Thomas looked much older, no longer as student. He was still yelling around on the square, but I still had the impression that he had become calmer. “
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