Coach vs. PSG construct: Thomas Tuchel stumbles upon Qatar

Thursday December 24th 2020

Coach vs. PSG construct
Thomas Tuchel stumbles upon Qatar

A comment from David Needy

Thomas Tuchel is considered complicated and choleric, at Paris Saint-Germain he messes with the sports director Leonardo. In the end, however, the coach was fired because he stumbled upon the PSG construct and the Qatar owners did not trust him to achieve great European success.

Now Thomas Tuchel has also got it. In the Qatari era, Paris Saint-Germain parted ways with his fifth coach. The dismissal of Tuchel is probably the most surprising – but there have always been signs of the decision of the PSG bosses. In the end, the German coach falls over the dispute with his sports director, over his own words – and over the only goal pursued by the club owners from Qatar.

Tuchel was as close as no one before him: Champions League final. The Parisians dream since the club was taken over by the state company Qatari Sports Investments in 2011. Tuchel failed extremely narrowly. In an exciting final in the summer of 2020, he only lost 1-0 to the triple winner from Munich. For the Qatar owners nothing else counts than the great triumph in the premier class, which is why they have never kept a secret.

After poor league results and third place before the turn of the year, the emirate no longer trusted Tuchel with this success. At the time, his commitment was based on the personal request of the Qatari head of state Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. The plan to win the Champions League has always been part of a wider attempt to improve the image of the emirate with a miserable human rights record through sport and to make the desert state better known and recognized.

Tuchel clashes with Qatar construct

Tuchel clashed with this plan. He missed the recognition for his very strong performance with the team (two champions, cup winners, CL final). The coach denounced the extreme expectations in the club, after all he had noticeably developed PSG in his two and a half years and was only one game before the big hit. "We never had the feeling that we have now convinced people and that they recognize our performance," said Tuchel in an interview published the day before on Sport1. "It also makes you a little sad or angry sometimes." The club should not have liked the words at all. Even less so to the owners in Qatar.

The emirate, in which equality between women and men doesn’t even come close on paper, people are discriminated against on the basis of their religion, sexual self-determination or sexual orientation, and in which the exploitation of migrant workers is systematically pursued, bought into football. First in Paris, but then also on a European level. So it was possible to advance to the final of the premier class. But cloth quarreled. "I don't know if it always has to be higher, higher, higher," he said in the same interview. "I just like football. And in a club like this, it's not always just football."

Of course, the coach loves being on the sidelines as much as anyone else during the Champions League anthem. In fact, it's a bit addicting, he admitted. But the whole PSG construct, the Qatar construct, made him think more and more. He doesn't want to be sports minister or sports politician, he said. At the Paris club, with Qatar as the owner, you're never just a coach. For every coach in the world, the billion dollar structure in the French capital is a risk: Tuchel has now stumbled upon it.

Falling out with Leonardo

There has been speculation about the dismissal of the German coach anyway. That was also due to his falling out with sports director Leonardo. The Brazilian did not renew the contract of the captain and defensive boss Thiago Silva, which annoyed Tuchel. And rightly so, when you see the defender's top performance at his new employer, Chelsea FC. Tuchel Leonardo also made responsible for the departures of Adil Aouchiches, Edinson Cavanis, Thomas Meuniers and Eric Maxim Choupo-Motings. The sports director never met his transfer requests, or only fulfilled them late.

Tuchel is also considered too perfectionist, choleric, unreasonable. Simply: as too complicated. He also split up with BVB in 2017 in an argument, fell out with the bosses over dealing with the attack on the team bus before a Champions League game. He lost the players' support through public statements about them. Of course, the coach touched the megastars Neymar and Mbappé more gently, but you couldn't hear any confessions of love for their coach from their mouths either.

The Parisian fans have not really loved Tuchel for a long time due to his sometimes disgruntled and slightly grouchy manner. But then he reached the Champions League final. But that was not enough for the sheikhs in Qatar.