Inside Thomas Tuchel’s uncommon method of working: Those who’ve seen the great, the dangerous and the ugly aspect of the brand new England boss reveal all

The Thomas Tuchel era has begun.

We’ve heard the new England boss speak about building a ‘brotherhood’. We’ve heard his players reveal how he wants them to make every second count. We’ve glimpsed behind the curtain into how training will look and on Friday at Wembley we will see for the first time Tuchel put his plans into action as he bids to deliver World Cup glory.

So far, it’s the same story as anyone who has ever worked with Tuchel will tell: a manager obsessed by the details, who agonises over the smallest points, and who does things his own way.

At the start of their first training session, players held hands in a circle and tried to keep the ball up. If they failed to do so, as Dan Burn found out, they all had to do 10 press ups. Later, he had them pop balls into a dustbin.

Tuchel has always done things differently. At former club Mainz, he made his defenders hold tennis balls so they couldn’t pull the shirts of the attackers. At Borussia Dortmund, the players warmed up by playing basketball.

‘He was all about the details,’ Roman Burki, the Dortmund keeper who won the German Cup under Tuchel in 2016-17 tells Mail Sport. ‘Every time we did passing drills, he wanted the keepers involved. He wanted us to eat a certain way. He told the chefs he didn’t want a lot of fat and to use better oil.

‘He was obsessed with players passing the ball to the right feet to give them time to turn immediately. We almost never had the same training session.’

Because that’s the word people always use about him. Obsessed. He and Pep Guardiola once spent hours moving salt and pepper pots around a Munich restaurant table in as they delved into their tactical beliefs.

Before a pre-season friendly against Olympiacos with Mainz, Tuchel was seen stooping over the pitch measuring the height of the grass and was so impressed with the surface he told the club’s sporting director to hire the groundsman.

One of his first moves as England boss was to switch the schedules around so players do their media in the mornings and train in the afternoon, closer to the time matches will take place.

He’s rearranged the layout of St George’s Park to focus more on the communal areas.

That togetherness, too, has been one of the key messages from Tuchel. He inspired his new charges with an impassioned speech, one Morgan Gibbs-White described as ‘very intense’. He told his players to emulate the great NBA basketball sides of the past, who high-fived each other when they succeeded and picked them up off the floor when they didn’t.

He showed them graphs of data from the Euro 2024 defeat by Spain and how their interactions with each other had dropped from 60 in the first half to 35 in the second. To win the World Cup, his players will need to be there for each other when they need it.

Tuchel encouraged his players to set their own high standards and not be afraid to dig each other out if they felt the standards weren’t being set – because he certainly will.

‘We never knew which Thomas Tuchel would turn up to training,’ Shinji Okazaki, Tuchel’s top scorer at Mainz in 2013-14, tells Mail Sport. ‘It was as if he had two personalities.

‘Sometimes he was smart, sometimes he was emotional. Some days he would turn up happy and enjoy the training session and other times he was… crazy.

‘I missed a shot once and he ran up to me and shouted at me 10cm from my face. He was speaking German which was difficult for me but I definitely understood his emotion!

‘I know managers have to be crazy sometimes because if they don’t win games they get sacked but Thomas is more like this than other coaches. He knew I could take it. If he was angry with me, he knew I’d never give up.’

Burki backs that up. Get it wrong, whether you are capless Myles Lewis-Skelly or Real Madrid superstar Jude Bellingham, and you will hear about it.

‘He was always honest with everyone. It didn’t matter if you were a five-star player, he gave his opinion,’ he adds. ‘If you liked it or not, he’s the boss.

‘On the field, every player was the same. You have to work and if you are not working you will hear it – and we heard it many times!’

While it’s been all smiles so far at St George’s Park ahead of Tuchel’s opening game against Albania, if history is anything to go by, things have a tendency to erupt – and quickly.

A good job, perhaps, that Tuchel’s agreement with the FA is only an 18-month one-tournament World Cup deal.

Former Mainz goalkeeper Heinz Muller called him a ‘dictator’. Tuchel eventually walked away from Mainz in 2014. He was fired by PSG on Christmas Eve after falling out with the sporting director over transfers. Even after winning the German Cup with Dortmund in 2017 he left at the end of the season.

Dortmund chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke, in discussing Tuchel’s departure from the club, described him as a ‘difficult person but a fantastic coach’.

Tuchel left Bayern Munich last summer and on the appointment of his successor Vincent Kompany, club legend and board member Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said: ‘He (Kompany) embodies the community and does not place himself above it, as unfortunately was the case last year.’

Reports in Germany around the time of Tuchel’s departure from Bayern claimed there was a dressing room split with one half against their boss and others, including Harry Kane and Eric Dier, part of a group in favour of the coach and his authority.

‘He is pretty straight in how he talks,’ Kane said. ‘Maybe there were some players who didn’t like that or agree with that.’

Some of Tuchel’s former colleagues do not wish to speak at all about their time with Tuchel when contacted by Mail Sport, preferring instead to focus on their new endeavours. Others, who insist on speaking off the record, talk of a man who would charm you one moment and cut you off the next if he didn’t feel like you were reading from his page.

Yet for all the obsession and the fire, there are many others who played under him who say what sets Tuchel apart is his ‘human side’.

‘Tuchel is one of the best coaches I have ever played under,’ legendary defender Thiago Silva tells Mail Sport, Tuchel’s captain at PSG and Chelsea. ‘We often talked about tactics together and it’s his love of this side of the game that always helped him find new successes and win more trophies and titles but what makes him so good is his passion about football and his feeling with his players. He is particular in how he works but he has a special human side.

‘When we lost the Champions League final to Bayern Munich (with PSG in 2020), he presented me with a big photo of us with a beautiful message that, regardless of the defeat by Bayern Munich, it was more important for us to continue to search for new chapters. He taught me that while a win brings happiness, a defeat just brings lessons for you to learn. A year later, we won the Champions League together at Chelsea.’

When they did so, beating Guardiola’s Manchester City, Tuchel sent another photograph to his staff, a montage of the players and all backroom staff including the chefs and medical team with a personal message to each one.

Tuchel made a point of FaceTiming all his England players before they got together at St George’s Park in a bid to get to know them better, as people as much as footballers.

‘He sent a text to introduce himself and set up a video call to get to know me,’ said Aston Villa midfielder Morgan Rogers. ‘I have never had that experience with a manager before so it was nice to kind of get to know each other and see each other so when I came here it was not the first interaction I had with him. It was nice just to speak about football, me as a person and him as a person.

‘When I met him his aura and demeanour… it’s hard to describe but he has that level of confidence, that level of respect already. His presence is a bit different. Certain managers have different ways about them. His aura is one I’ve not experienced before. That’s different to what I’ve faced before.

‘You can see the way he is, the way he acts. He has been so chilled and calm. But when it is time to work, it is time to work. That is the kind of vibe I have got off him from the day or so I have been here. It is really good so far. I am really enjoying it.’

It’s been something Tuchel has liked to do throughout his career. He likes to connect with his players, make them feel wanted. He’s managed the biggest names – and egos – in football, from Neymar to Kylian Mbappe.

‘I had just got relegated with Freiburg and I didn’t know what was coming next,’ says Burki. ‘My agent told me Borussia Dortmund wanted me. I couldn’t believe it. I’d just got relegated. Tuchel was taking over at Dortmund and he called me and told me he could see us both in front of the Yellow Wall. After we chatted, he kept texting me: “You and me in front of the Yellow Wall, imagine that!” For me, it was something special.

‘He was always interested in your family and how things were at home. He knew we were humans and can be affected by things away from football.

‘I had a situation when I wasn’t happy with the goalkeeping training. I felt stuck. I didn’t know if I should go and see him but we had a meeting and he wrote everything down. I expected him to tell me to do my job but he thanked me for coming to him and a week later we had a second goalkeeping coach arrive. Even if he saw things differently, he always listened.’

When the Dortmund team bus was hit by three roadside bombs in 2017, Tuchel arranged with the club for every player to have security and the never drove home without a police escort. He arranged for players to see a therapist.

‘He did everything he could,’ adds Burki. ‘He spoke to lots of us alone, even though it was a big shock to him too, because we had players who were really struggling.’

As with his tactics, it’s all in the personal details. At Chelsea, he shipped crates of Lebkuchen, a traditional German festive biscuit, as a special Christmas present for his squad. At Mainz, he told former Japan international Okazaki that he would take them out to a nearby Japanese restaurant if he managed to score against his former club Stuttgart.

‘I scored – and he paid!’ says Okazaki.

They all paint the same picture of Tuchel. Charismatic, caring, controlling. An intense mind that builds towers of greatness but tears them down just as quickly once it begins to unravel. And, in the end, it so often does.

As long as football returns home before it all crashes down in flames, it will have been worth it.