Thomas Tuchel has opened up on the time he forgot to prepare Borussia Dortmund for penalties and they lost a cup final shootout to Bayern Munich, a lesson he is now applying to England's World Cup campaign.
Tuchel's Painful Penalty Lesson
Tuchel is preparing to lead England into a knockout match for the first time as they face DR Congo today for a place in the round of 16 of the World Cup. Between spells with Dortmund, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea, six of the finals Tuchel has contested were settled on penalties, of which he has only won two.
One of those defeats came in the 2015-16 DFB Pokal final against Bayern Munich, Tuchel's first campaign with Dortmund. Tuchel and FA staff are aware that in the knockout stages of a World Cup with an extra round, England will likely face at least one penalty shootout to become champions for the first time since 1966.
Under previous head coach Gareth Southgate, England won three of four penalty shootouts, only losing to Italy in the Euro 2020 final.
The Forgotten Preparation
Asked whether he is ready for the prospect of penalties, Tuchel replied: “I’ll tell you a funny story. Not so funny for me. My first cup final in Germany with Dortmund in my first year, I play against Bayern and against Pep [Guardiola]. It was a nightmare because Bayern and Pep, from 120 possible points they had 130 in the season or something. It was a joke. We had the next-highest number of points and were second.
“We prepared everything in this match. I prepared everything. We needed to twist the tactics, and they twisted the tactics, and we twisted the structure and he twisted the structure, and it was like a fight and people got tired and it went into extra time. Then the whistle went and I was just not prepared. I forgot to prepare for a penalty shootout.
“So we ended up asking the players: ‘Do you want to shoot? Do you want to shoot? Do you want to shoot?’ And they were ready for it. They were: one, two, three, four, five, we go. And we were absolutely not ready. And we lost it.”
Building a Penalty Programme
Tuchel continued: “A very painful experience and a big, big scar on me, because I felt really, really badly that I had let myself down. It was the first time. It will never happen again. So from there, we started our own programme, our own preparation. Now I go into the FA and I have — on the highest level, since years and years — a penalty programme that is so easy [for me to] just [pick up] and wait for people to tell me who are the best shooters. We trained it. We have a process in place. So we are prepared.
“This has become such an important part of football now. We have assistant coaches, we have background staff who just set one of the best programmes in place that I have witnessed. So we know exactly what is going to happen. And the platform is there.”
The German, whose own nation lost a first-ever World Cup shootout against Paraguay on Monday, added: “This is still no guarantee that you win it. I had crazy penalty shootouts. Against Liverpool, for example, with 11 [penalties] against 11 or whatever. But [preparation] is on the highest level now, thanks to the FA, of course, and thanks to my development. It is just another example that you sometimes have to have a painful experience to understand where to get better.”
