“The motherland of football gets a German daddy. Incredible!” – this is how the heartland of Germany’s football coverage, the tabloid Bild, reacted to the news of Thomas Tuchel’s appointment as England manager.
The second major news was of course how ze English would respond to a Kraut getting the Three Lions’ top job. Germans, more than anyone else, I think, want to be loved abroad. And although we don’t necessarily do much to gain that love, we are very watchful in this regard. And over-easily offended.
So, of course, the news cycle produced German headlines such as: “England’s press outraged”, “English media: ‘We need a patriot’”, “British press immediately up in arms”. The most neutral version was “Mixed reactions regarding Tuchel”. Which tells me two things.
First, the British media has come a long way. Two decades ago, choosing a German for this position would have led to sheer vitriol – pics of Tuchel with a spiked helmet, Nazi connotations etc. And because of this, the Football Association would have probably never considered a German back then.
Today, however, the Sun celebrated Tuchel’s appointment – in German! – and most other press reactions were favourable, too. To me that’s a sign that the British press has overcome a lot of the cliches they relied on before, when German-bashing or at least poking fun at us earned them quick wins with the wider public.
The 2006 World Cup in Germany had a lot to do with changing that. Hosting it won the hearts of even those English fans and reporters who had formerly regarded football and Germans as war by other means.
My second thought: I wish the German media had let go of the cliche as well. But your Daily Mail did a good job of reassuring our confirmation bias: the one outraged voice, not the many welcoming ones, made the headlines as a pars pro toto.
And this of course offered a great opportunity for Tuchel-Freude and to remind German readers that, a) England haven’t just been waiting for a title since 1966 but actually much longer, as the Wembley goal didn’t cross the line. And b) that the proud football nation England must be really desperate to pick a German.
Leaving that aside, there’s something football fans and basically anyone who has watched Ted Lasso knows for sure: British media in general are much, much tougher than anything German players and coaches are used to back home.
You probably remember Jürgen Klopp, at his first press conference in 2015, cheekily telling reporters how much he had heard about “the British press” – and that it was up to them now to prove it all wrong. Everyone laughed.
Before him, Jürgen Klinsmann, the “notorious diver” (Evening Standard) and “most hated player in England next to Maradona” (Times) charmingly found a way to gain respect by asking at his Spurs press conference whether there was a good diving school nearby.
For Thomas Tuchel, the pressure will be infinitely higher – he will carry the weight of soon-to-be 60 years of English pain on his German shoulders. And the tabloid newspaper Bild has already advised Tuchel to develop a thicker skin than he showed towards media criticism when coaching Bayern München: “Compared to the tough and brutal British TV pundit hell of Carragher, Neville & Lineker, the likes of Hamann and Matthäus were kindergarten.”
The sports magazine Kicker added another perspective: “Thomas Tuchel, as the media response in England has shown, is not being welcomed with open arms. As can be read between the lines, he is most likely to be criticised for something he cannot influence, but what is important to the English: he is not English.”
I am not sure. Because Tuchel, his German bluntness and his short fuse actually offer a lot more than a passport to cause controversy. But none of this is news to the FA committee, and still they opted for Tuchel.
Which shows an openness the German Football Association has yet to prove: Tuchel will be England’s third foreign manager. We have never had one, let alone one coming from one of our biggest football rivals, England.
I think Tuchel will take you far. Because early on, as a player and coach, he has learned what it is like to be unlucky, to fail, to doubt, to be doubted and to be in pain, literally.
He has overcome all of that to become a coach of global scale, who x-rays his opponents like no one else. One of these opponents being the German Nationalmannschaft. I am hoping for penalties in the next World Cup finals.
