However you look at it, present-day soccer lies firmly in the hands of the latter species of coach. Is it the swashbuckling, ex-professional soccer player-turned-coach who knows the locker room inside out? Or is it the laptop-type coach, who never played in the big arenas and prefers the bookish approach of acquiring his knowledge in the academic realm at a string of sports universities? But when applied to these successful German coaches, it becomes clear that the question misses the mark. “Which coach is better?” is the classic dilemma on the business side of sports.
They were able to combine state-of-the-art sports-science know-how with two rather anachronistic elements: having the time to develop and exercising patience in the pursuit of championship titles. Both of the coaches in the Champions League final benefited from these factors, and so, too, did Klopp and Nagelsmann.
What is most certainly true is that we’re seeing a number of key success factors otherwise uncommon in the brutal, hire-and-fire business of professional soccer. But is it really true that Germans reign supreme in the coaching universe? And we can safely assume that their success stories will launch a new trend in the soccer world. Yet another German coach, Jürgen Klopp, had won the Champions League with his FC Liverpool team the previous season, but this time it was these three German coaches vying for the title, with Nagelsmann and his RB Leipzig eventually bowing out in the semifinals.ĭoes this mean that German coaches are now the measure of all things? Indeed, they headed up three of the final four teams, which is something the Champions League had never seen before. One way to look at the 2019–2020 UEFA Champions League season – which recently came to an end with Bayern Munich winning the final 1:0 against Paris Saint-Germain – is to see it as a battle among German coaches in which Hansi Flick ultimately triumphed over Thomas Tuchel and Julian Nagelsmann.