As a football fan, having to choose between coaches Jürgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel is roughly the same as the eternal question of whether a person should trust their feelings or their intellect. Some will probably say feeling, others reason – or vice versa. But most should probably choose the golden mean of both. In this respect, the venue for the great Tuchel-Klopp duel is ideal: the venerable Wembley Stadium in London, as one of the few truly historic and modern venues in the world, combines emotionality and rationality in roughly equal parts.
This special aura makes Wembley an ideal neutral venue for national and international cup finals – especially the current final in the Football League Cup of the top four football leagues in England, in which Liverpool FC and Chelsea FC meet on Sunday (5.30 p.m.) – two clubs that could hardly be further apart by nature.
For both top clubs, only maximum success is good enough. But along the way, they seem to be pursuing fundamentally different approaches. As an old passion club based on the mythical Anfield Road, Liverpool tries to stage itself through the community experience – despite the thorough commercialization that also existed before the Reds has not stopped, because since 2010 the majority of the club has belonged to the American stock trader John W. Henry, who holds the shares through his Fenway Sports Group.
Hardly anyone can compare the two better than Mainz manager Christian Heidel
In contrast, Chelsea, whose stadium is located at Stamford Bridge on the border with upscale London’s Chelsea area, is the epitome of an investor-run club. the Blues make little secret of it with their Russian oligarch owner Roman Abramowitsch, preferring to favor reason instead of intuition. With their model, both clubs have established themselves at the top of world football – because both have found the right coach for their orientation: Klopp, 54, at Liverpool FC, Tuchel, 48, at Chelsea FC.
Christian Heidel, who knows the two coaches better than almost anyone else, can provide an in-depth analysis. Heidel, 58, as manager of FSV Mainz 05, enabled both of them to become coaches in professional football and spent twelve years alongside Klopp (2001-2008) and Tuchel (2009-2014) on the sidelines. In the video call he says right at the beginning: “Since there are not many paths to success, Klopp and Tuchel must have more in common than they differ – and they have that: outstanding technical and mediation skills as well as a high level of authenticity.”
The careers of the two ran through similar stations. After Mainz, both Klopp and later Tuchel were promoted abroad via Borussia Dortmund. Klopp went to Liverpool on the island in October 2015, whereas Tuchel had made a stopover at Paris Saint-Germain, which was supported by the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, before his engagement in Chelsea, which began in January 2021. Both, says Heidel, “intuitively chose the clubs that matched their personalities”.
With the offer from Liverpool, says Heidel, he can well imagine that Klopp “certainly clenched his fist for a moment” because the club had always been his “big favourite”: “Jürgen is a highly emotional person, the spectacle and emotions needed and enjoyed.” So he probably wouldn’t be a trainer “for a test-tube club” where he didn’t feel the support of the people in the same way. He used to go to the fans at the stadium fence “after every game”. When Klopp walks through Mainz today, according to Heidel, who is still good friends with him, very few people would ask “for a photo” because everyone already had one thing: “Kloppo is just one of them, and that’s it not posed.”
At first, Tuchel always seemed to suffer from the comparison with Klopp
Although Klopp is currently one of the most recognizable faces in football, he has retained a considerable degree of down-to-earthness. Even the obligatory cheering fist in front of the fan curve after victories with Liverpool seems to be more for the sake of the supporters than to put himself in the center of attention. Heidel says: “Klopp has the talent to turn an entire region upside down with his aura. He not only proved that in Germany, but also now again in Liverpool.” Surely winning Liverpool’s first championship in 30 years should have helped him in the summer of 2020 (as well as winning the Champions League a year earlier). But above all, explains Heidel, Klopp has the difficult-to-learn triad of “charisma, conviction and quick-wittedness”.
Tuchel in particular suffered from the comparison with Klopp in his early phase as a professional coach in Mainz and Dortmund. Only after the title in the premier class with Chelsea in 2021 did the view of him change in Germany. Before that, he was “very often misjudged” and labeled as “inaccessible and complicated,” says Heidel, because he doesn’t capture the masses like Klopp. Despite comparable emotionality, Tuchel is only “more reserved” and sets other priorities: “Thomas is a tinkerer who abhors superficiality and can rack his brains over the right strategy. I remember a bus ride with him when he spent hours on a I was staring at the picture in a Spiegel article. All I could make out was a knitting pattern. It was a picture of his colleague Pep Guardiola’s team, with all the passes in a game plotted.”
Because of this positive obsession, rumors often surfaced that Tuchel was too demanding when dealing with his players. Most recently, there were disagreements with the club management at his stations in Dortmund and Paris. After disagreements with sports director Leonardo, Tuchel was even fired on Christmas Eve at PSG, which he led to two championships. And in London? Heidel’s assessment: “I am sure that this time he will stay at Chelsea for a long time because he has learned from his previous activities what is important in team management. If he makes a snail out of a player in Mainz, nobody cares. But in Tackling a Neymar in Paris immediately stokes global headlines.”
Although they would never admit it, there is definitely a rivalry between the two
With their successful work, Klopp and Tuchel have become excellent ambassadors of German football in recent years. The current highlight of the DFB coaches, who are increasingly in demand abroad, is the first German coaching duel in an English cup final. Even if Klopp and Tuchel would probably not admit it, Heidel believes that there is “a healthy rivalry” between them – and the final is therefore a special game for both of them.
Who is the favourite? Heidel expects a game “at eye level, which will be decided by the day’s form”, but also “by luck and bad luck”: “After the Chelsea game on Tuesday (2-0 against Lille in the Champions League) I was convinced: it will be difficult for Liverpool! Then when I saw Liverpool a day later (they beat Leeds 6-0 in the league catch-up game) I thought: Oh, Chelsea need to wrap up warm!” He would prefer to bet on a draw, but that’s not possible in this case.
When it comes to answering the question about Klopp or Tuchel, Christian Heidel feels like almost everyone else: Jürgen Klopp says the feeling, Thomas Tuchel says the reason.
