The Sun Newspaper

THOMAS TUCHEL will never forget the day his dinner date with Pep Guardiola turned Messi.But today he plans to turn the tables on his managerial mentor.
Thomas Tuchel and Pep Guardiola enjoyed dinner together in 2014Credit: Reuters
In December 2014, Tuchel was invited to a Munich restaurant by the man who was the king of German football at the time.
Tuchel was between jobs after walking out of Mainz and jumped at the opportunity to pick the brains of then Bayern boss Guardiola.
As the duo prepare for a Wembley reunion this afternoon, Tuchel asked: “When you are out for dinner with Pep, why not talk about football? What else was there for me to talk about?
“For me, he was a huge influence. I didn’t know him when he was at Barcelona — but I watched almost every game and was very impressed by the way he made success happen.
“Then I became the coach at Mainz and had the opportunity to play against him when he was in charge at Bayern. And that was not always such a pleasure. But every game against him at that time was a big lesson for me, so when we had dinner together in Munich obviously we talked about tactics.
“We had some drawings that we used on the table to go through all the positions and we were moving the salt and pepper pots around to explain the formations he was using.
“We were discussing how he changed Barcelona when he bought Fabregas and how to play Messi as a false nine and sometimes with a single six or a double six. Just two coaches talking about normal stuff.”
Tuchel is acutely aware he has never beaten a Guardiola team in five previous meetings while at Mainz and Borussia Dortmund.
But if all goes according to plan, he could be pitting his wits against the all-conquering Spaniard three times in the next six weeks, in the FA Cup, the Premier League and the Champions League final.
Thomas Tuchel has never beaten Pep Guardiola in five previous attemptsCredit: Getty
Guardiola and Tuchel could meet three times in the next six weeksCredit: Getty
Tuchel said: “Bayern Munich with Hansi Flick and Manchester City with Pep are the benchmark in European football.
“At the moment we have to accept that there is a gap between Chelsea and Manchester City.
“But from day one of next season, we will hunt them to close the gap between us.”
This afternoon’s semi-final will provide a fascinating insight into just how much of a job Tuchel still has on his hands.
The German, 47, gave his players an extra night in Seville to recover from Tuesday’s Champions League quarter-final win over Porto, which sets up a mouth-watering clash with Real Madrid.
He revealed: “We had a very nice hotel in a very nice setting.
“We had the chance to sit outside because the weather was very warm and it was a very calming atmosphere for everybody to enjoy each other’s company.
“We created a bubble there which we cannot do here because for months the players could never go to a restaurant together.
“So we took advantage of this situation to let the players bond, to enjoy a glass of wine or a sip of beer — and to have some talks outside of tactics and line-ups.
These are all the little steps that we do to help the players to switch off sometimes — because in a schedule like this you need to be switched on a lot.

“In the next six weeks we play a semi-final of the Cup, a semi-final of the Champions League and seven league games which must all be played like a cup tie if we are going to finish in the top four.
“So it’s very important that, besides all this seriousness, the players must feel relaxed and have a good atmosphere together.
“We should be happy to be here and to have the privilege to be working at this level, it feels like being part of a family.”
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JAMIE CARRAGHER has passed on his views about French club football.It’s a waste of time, he says. “Nobody can tell me Ligue 1 is a top league.”
Kylian Mbappe and Neymar have fired PSG to a Champions League semi-finalCredit: EPA
The former Liverpool and England defender delivered a dose of logic after PSG’s Neymar and Kylian Mbappe had torn Bayern Munich apart in a Champions’ League quarter final, actually without scoring.
This may have been a successful enterprise financed by Middle East oil money. But the English rarely miss a chance to joust with the French.
Carragher scratched the itch again. A tiny spot but, perhaps inadvertently, a riposte to all those who think they were aimed at us: Brexit stuff, AstraZeneca bashing, our food, our fashion, you name it, starting from William the Conqueror and probably how we wore our woad.
Still, it was a tiny blow for Blighty because Euro facts back him up. Only one French team, Marseille, have ever won the continent’s leading club competition and PSG not at all.
Season after season, the aristocrat footballers of Paris find winning Ligue 1 as comfortable as a stroll beside the River Seine.
It works like this: Qatar state money pays for a number of the world’s best players for PSG while would-be domestic rivals sell the stars produced by French football academies, from Thierry Henry and Zinedine Zidane to Paul Pogba and Mbappe himself.
And while England have grubbed around for more than half a century to find an international team skilled enough even to reach a World Cup final, France have done so twice in the past six competitions.
That shouts of expert coaching pre-dating massive exporting.
PSG celebrate after knocking Bayern Munich out of the Champions League
Karren Brady is a columnist for SunSportCredit: PR Handout – Free to use
So Carragher has it half right and half wrong. Unless his club draw PSG, no manager would quietly curse being coupled with Lille, Lyon or Lens, all currently among Ligue 1’s top five.
The reaction would be different should the opposition come from Spain where, despite the league supremacy of Real Madrid and Barcelona, being matched with, say, Sevilla or Atletico brings on an instant pain.
And in Italy where Juventus have hogged the Serie A title for a decade, club competitiveness there is always a threat among half-a-dozen big city teams, particularly Inter but also Milan, Lazio, Roma and Torino. Much the same applies to Germany.
Carragher was talking football not politics. He couldn’t see why two of the very best players chose Ligue 1 ahead of the Premier League or La Liga.
All right, the glib answer is that PSG offered them enough money to tempt Midas. No other club could or would pay £225m for Neymar, dazzling but as quarrelsome as a cockerel, and £150m for Mbappe, a 19-year-old bolt of lightning.
And now, changing his mind for the Nth time, Neymar wishes to stay in Paris and it will come as no surprise if his team-mate does, too, especially if their team wins the Champions’ League.
No doubt there are other reasons why PSG are now so attractive to the pair.
One is, I think, that Mauricio Pottechino is an understanding and approachable manager and life around Parc des Princes is most pleasurable.

Even awkward squad members respond to him.
Then again, the Qatari fortune that has financed next year’s World Cup has also guaranteed a succession of Ligue 1 titles and all that huge superiority; those games in which players can showcase their brilliance without too much of a risk.
In the end then, PSG are doing no-one any favours but themselves. And that’s football in the 2020s.
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