The statistics don’t lie
Tuchel is the worst Bayern coach since Klinsmann
By David Needy
February 18, 2024, 9:03 p.m
Things are getting tricky for Thomas Tuchel: The Bayern coach’s chair is shaking after the third bankruptcy in a week. The embarrassment in Bochum makes Tuchel the statistically worst coach for Munich in 15 years. His team is lacking at the front and back.
Pep Guardiola has 2.41 and Jupp Heynckes 2.49. Hansi Flick even got a strong 2.53. This refers to the average points collected per game. As a coach for FC Bayern. As is well known, Thomas Tuchel has been on the sidelines there since last March. He took over for today’s national coach Julian Nagelsmann last March in order to finally ensure great success again. But after the embarrassing defeat at blatant outsiders VfL Bochum, Tuchel and his team are threatened with a season without a title. The first in more than a decade, since 2012. And with another defeat, the Bayern coach is statistically the worst Munich coach since Jürgen Klinsmann.
While the 1990 world champion only collected 1.95 points per game during his tenure (2008 to 2009), For Tuchel it is 2.02 in his 44 games as manager so far. This means he beats Louis van Gaal’s statistics (2009 to 2011) by 0.01 points. For the Dutchman and Klinsmann, the miserable returns were reason enough to be fired. Tuchel is also facing increasingly difficult weeks.
Goodbye championship? The fact that things are getting so difficult for the Bayern coach is not solely due to the recent blow in the neck in Bochum. After three bankruptcies within a week (in the top game of the Bundesliga at Bayern Leverkusen, in the Champions League at Lazio Rome and now the defeat at the Ruhrstadion), the German football record champions could gamble away everything in a few days. The gap to the table leaders from Leverkusen is now eight points. On Saturday, RB Leipzig comes to the Allianz Arena, which has shown in the past that it can annoy Bayern. In the second leg of the round of 16 of the premier class, Munich will have to turn around Wednesday’s 0-1 loss at the beginning of March. In the DFB Cup they had already failed in the autumn against third division team 1. FC Saarbrücken.
Hardly any goals under Tuchel
Is Tuchel no longer reaching his team? Has the “Mia san mia” been lost? Isn’t the team fighting for the coach? All speculation. But against Bochum, the Munich team ran six kilometers less than their opponents and in general there has been a lack of passion and fighting spirit in the last few weeks.
And also in callousness, even if FC Bayern scored two goals against Bochum, and even a few shooting festivals this season, and with 61 goals they still statistically have the best offensive in the league. The record champions have been finding it extremely difficult to score goals under Tuchel for months. Before the two goals in Bochum, his team had remained goalless twice in a row. A normality for other teams, but an absurdity at FC Bayern and most recently the case in the 2014/15 season under Guardiola. A big difference: Back then, Munich, as champions for a long time, conserved their strength in the league.
FC Bayern is a long way from that under Thomas Tuchel, the statistically worst coach in 15 years: they have scored 20 of their own goals in the last 14 competitive games. Not enough if you want to be at the top. Especially because the record champions conceded 18 goals (in the Bundesliga they have scored ten more goals than Leverkusen so far this season). The Werkself scored 13 more goals in the last 14 games, while VfB Stuttgart, who are slowly but surely challenging Munich for third place in the league, scored 28 times during this period.