Thirty years ago, Thomas Tuchel was pouring drinks at the wildest hip-hop parties in Stuttgart. Now he is the England manager tasked with winning the World Cup – and he has warned Jude Bellingham that not even the Real Madrid superstar is guaranteed a starting place.
Tuchel, 52, almost gave up on football entirely after a knee injury ended his playing career at 23. The cartilage damage was so severe he could barely walk up stairs. An operation left him strapped for cash because his insurance had not covered it, and he took a student job at a bar to earn a living.
“Thomas Tuchel, once a Stuttgart bartender, warns Jude Bellingham he is not guaranteed a starting place for England at the World Cup.”
It was there that Ralf Rangnick, his former coach at SSV Ulm, tracked him down. “When I found out that he was working in a bar in Stuttgart to earn his living, I could hardly believe it,” Rangnick told the BBC. “I called him and I said, ‘what are you doing?’ He said ‘I have to earn my living there’. I said to him, ‘Thomas, please, why don’t you come to us in Stuttgart and work as a youth-team coach?’ I brought him together with the academy director and that’s how his coaching career started.”
Tuchel had played under Rangnick at Ulm in the early 1990s, when Rangnick was revolutionising German football with zonal marking. “He changed the way I watched football on television,” Tuchel later told Sky Sports. Rangnick quickly spotted the young defender’s coaching potential. “After a couple of weeks when you are a head coach you can always pretty precisely tell which players could become a coach,” he said.
Now, on the eve of the World Cup, Tuchel is making clear that no individual is bigger than the team. Bellingham is in a three-way fight with Morgan Rogers and Eberechi Eze for the No10 role, and Tuchel warned that England can win without him. “We have a lot of proof we can win football matches without Jude and that’s the more important headline,” Tuchel said. “Jude is in amazing form but we have to stop talking about individuals. Jude will not win this World Cup alone. It’s simply impossible.”
The England boss acknowledged the competition for places. “It is a big decision because both players who are competing, or all three players who are competing – Ebs played for a No8 and also on the left wing for us. So there are starters on the highest level all three of them. They need to understand that not all of them will start all of the time.”
Despite some bookmakers installing England as third favourites in North America, Tuchel refused to dwell on the tag. His focus is on the squad’s collective strength as they prepare for their Group opener against Croatia on June 17. “We win it as a team,” he said. “What will we do if Jude has an injury tomorrow? Hopefully he will not have one.”