Media working around the clock to deny Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea credit

Chelsea defeated Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, the most expensively assembled squad in football history. Pep Guardiola has managed four teams in his career; FC Barcelona (the first team and B team), Bayern Munich, and Manchester City. Guardiola has never really managed a squad where he didn’t have the best players in the country. Guardiola is a media darling, and that’s not his fault.

However, it’s exhausting seeing pundits talk from all sides of their mouths, even at the expense of not making sense, to make it appear that Guardiola fails because he’s too smart. Unfortunately, many Chelsea fans are fueling the narrative.

Chelsea played Manchester City four times this season. They won the first one fair and square, because Chelsea were setup to concede as many clear cut chances as they did. Chelsea tried to match Manchester City in the press, and that match was practically won in the first half. Thomas Tuchel has managed three games against Manchester City this season and he has not only won all three, he only conceded more big chances than his Spanish counterpart in one of those matches.

Across those three matches, Manchester City has allowed seven clear cut chances, Chelsea has allowed just three. The running narrative is that Pep Guardiola was guilty of “overthinking” the team selection for the UEFA Champions League final. This narrative pushes the idea that Guardiola is too smart to be outsmarted. What Thomas Tuchel has showed is that perhaps Guardiola is not as tactically astute as many have given him credit for. The media trying to paint Guardiola underachieving despite spending all he has, shows that football is indeed a game of narratives.

Let’s look into the drivel that is “HE PLAYED NO DEFENSIVE MIDFIELDER IN A FINAL!! HE’S OVERTHOUGHT IT AGAIN!! THAT’S WHY HE’S LOST”. No, it’s not. Chelsea played Manchester City in the FA Cup semifinal at Wembley. Guardiola deployed two defensive midfielders in that game. Two. They made seven tackles plus interceptions combined. One of them accounted for six of these. The result of that match was exactly the same as the result of the match where Guardiola played no defensive midfielder. Maybe Guardiola’s fortunes aren’t tied to the (non)inclusion of defensive midfielder(s).

Manchester City also played a defensive midfielder against Chelsea in the league at the Etihad. Chelsea still won that game, in fact scoring twice. Chelsea has outplayed Manchester City every time they’ve met them under Tuchel. The narrative that he’s too smart to guide a very talented Manchester City team to a Champions League victory is disrespectful to the Chelsea head coach and players.

Manchester City were viewed as clear favorites based on everything except the current Champions League campaign, which is weird because it is a Champions League game. Chelsea had conceded a record four goals coming into the final, same as Manchester City. Chelsea had scored 22 goals, to Manchester City’s 25. Edouard Mendy had kept more clean sheets (eight) than Ederson (seven). Chelsea was at least on par with Manchester City in the Champions League this season, both on attacking and defensive metrics, and were even better in some of those. In fact, Chelsea created more big chances per game (3.2) than Manchester City (2.5) in the Champions League this season.

All anyone had to do was looking at reality, and/or the underlying numbers, and it would have been clear that Manchester City were playing a team at least as good as them in the final. Many managers get heavily criticized for doing a lot less, and no one criticizes these managers for overthinking. Yet Guardiola is supposed to be so ahead of the game that he gets in his own way?

It’s not difficult to see why Guardiola felt he wouldn’t need a defensive midfielder in the final against Chelsea. He expected Chelsea to be compact and defend for most of the game. That’s far from surprising. Chelsea had lost three of their last four games going into the final, so anyone with half a brain would have expected Chelsea to be extra careful defensively going into the biggest game in club football.

Guardiola expected to have majority of possession, he wanted to have the players that would help retain possession for most of the game, which is reasonable because City have been very good at keeping the ball. Guardiola has many chance creators in his team, and by having a lot of the ball and deploying a lot of technically gifted players he expected to create a lot of potential game winning chances. It did not work out that way. Tuchel had equally gifted players at his disposal, but he was able to create a game plan that would function in the situation, rather than deploying all his technically gifted players.

Tuchel’s team selection excluded Hakim Ziyech, who had scored twice against Manchester City this season. Christian Pulisic, who had a brilliant set of games against 13-time champions Real Madrid. He also left out very good talent like Callum Hudson-Odoi, who is very good at stretching play, Mateo Kovacic who is very good at dribbling under pressure and Kurt Zouma, who was sure to dominate Manchester City in set piece situations.

Tuchel, too, did not play all his cards, so it’s time the media start giving Tuchel the credit elite tacticians deserve, rather than focusing on the disgusting narrative that Guardiola can only lose if he allows another team to win.

If Guardiola constantly makes bad decisions in high profile games, then that’s not overthinking, that’s a manager who has no confidence in his tactical ability, or maybe just a manager who doesn’t have very good tactical ability. Every manager is nervous in a final, if one keeps doing the wrong thing under pressure, then maybe he’s not very good.