Chelsea Champions League lesson one: A new passionate tailor

Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel is Antonio Conte sans hair transplant

There’s a reasonable argument that Thomas Tuchel was the least welcomed new manager in Chelsea history, with Rafa Benitez being the only other competitor. Of course, the anger surrounding Tuchel’s appointment was more the product of Frank Lampard’s departure than the German’s arrival, but the displeasure was there all the same.

Getting into the fanbase’s good graces was always going to be an uphill battle for whoever replaced Lampard, regardless of who it was or when it happened, but Tuchel faced a particularly rough challenge. The dismissal of Lampard in January felt premature, and seemed like a betrayal of the “three-year plan” that the club had been pushing with the hiring of Lampard 18 months prior. The club looked to be building something wholistic and sustainable, yet the entire blueprint seemed to be burnt to a crisp after a string of admittedly ugly losses against Manchester City, Arsenal and Leicester City. Regardless, Lampard got the boot and Tuchel was almost immediately signed as his replacement.

The impact of Tuchel was noticeable from the very first team sheet, with a jarring switch to a back three and the deployment of Callum Hudson-Odoi as a wingback against Wolves. The result was something that quickly became a staple of Tuchel’s Chelsea: calm, organized defending mixed with exciting but unproductive attacking play. You’d rarely point to a scoreless draw as the start of something special, but in this particular case it was the clear introduction of a new era and new version of Chelsea.

In that sense, there were some parallels to Antonio Conte’s switch to the now famous 3-4-3 at halftime of a thorough beatdown at the hands of Arsenal. While he and Tuchel differed in the circumstances of their appointments, it was a midseason tactical switch to something that suited the philosophies and ideals of the manager that made a difference. Both managers ended their first seasons having delivered success on the very highest level.

Of course, that’s a lesson learnt from the entire second half of this season more than the Champions League final itself. The reason the Conte comparison is so relevant after this match in particular is down to something that felt entirely foreign after the last year-plus of empty stadiums.

On several instances, the camera showed Tuchel, so often pegged as the hyper-focused awkward genius, frantically rallying the thousands of Chelsea fans in the stands to give every ounce of their support to the team. His flailing and manic energy immediately brought back memories of Conte’s similarly unhinged interactions with fans from his technical area. It was incredibly satisfying to see, incredibly satisfying to hear, and it’s hard to think that it didn’t have at least a small impact on the team’s ability to see out the match as City desperately pushed for an equalizer.

Some might argue that a calming presence on the touchline is the ideal façade for a manager to put on in such a stressful time, but there was something undeniably real and humane in Tuchel’s actions on the sidelines in an otherwise painfully tense final half hour. And, most importantly, it worked.

The parallels between Conte and Tuchel can stretch from the overarching narratives around their managerial careers and tenures at Chelsea down to the minutiae of how they set a team out and the actions they require from the players in their system. I’ll leave the tactical nuances to the more well-studied, but the broad comparisons are too easy to ignore.

Both managers had to replace legendary Chelsea figures (though Conte had Guus Hiddink as a buffer), and found immediate success by imprinting their well-honed and unique ideas on an underachieving but undeniably talented squad. With Conte’s dominant title-winning side and Tuchel’s Champions League winners, both managers not only won silverware at the club, but arguably succeeded on a level beyond that of Mourinho, Ancelotti or Di Matteo. Of course, if those parallel arcs continue, things might get mighty uncomfortable by this time next year, but that’s a matter for next season. At the moment, the important point of comparison is that Chelsea once again brought in a tactical genius who managed to rebuild a struggling team in his image in short order. In both cases, the results were beyond what anyone could have reasonably expected.

To be fair, however, Tuchel lags far behind Conte in one particularly damning statistic: hair coverage. Conte has had famously impeccable hair since the start of his managerial career, after a playing career plagued by early-onset male pattern baldness. One can only assume that his miraculous reversal of follicle fortune was perfectly natural and not at all the product of scientific progress and medical aide. Winning, after all, is proven to stimulate hair growth. With some silverware under his belt, perhaps Tuchel will be blessed with a similarly luxurious ‘do. If he reappears in August with a radical mullet or a glorious pompadour, we’ll have no option but to firmly position the two managers on precisely identical pedestals among Chelsea’s greatest coaches. Until then, Tuchel sits just a…hair…below Conte (sorry), but the speed at which he has closed the gap is truly incredible.

Chelsea are once again in the hands of a capable and proven manager, and the expectation from here will be that this new period of glory for the club extends into the next several seasons. That’s a bit of a mythical concept at Chelsea, but Tuchel seems as well-positioned as anyone could be to establish a consistently dominant side going forward.

The immediate success in the Champions League should give everyone a healthy taste of what winning at the highest level feels like, and, ideally, Tuchel and his squad will be desperately chasing that same high as soon as the new season kicks off in a few short months.