Cool customer

It's pretty safe to say that Thomas Tuchel wasn't the happiest of campers last Saturday.

A last-second 2-1 loss to Dortmund kept his Mainz side on seven points after as many rounds. This season is the first time in Tuchel's tenure that the squad has had a losing record.

"I'm a really bad loser," Tuchel told Deutsche Welle before the match. "If you've lost a home match or you're winless in your last three, Saturday evenings aren't much fun. Not at all. It's really disappointing when we fail to live up to our expectations on the pitch."

Expectations are indeed higher in Mainz than ever before. Tipped as a near sure relegation candidate after being promoted in 2009, Tuchel kept the small southwestern club up with astonishing ease.

And he went that one better last season, riding young talents Lewis Holtby and Andre Schürrle to a fifth-place finish.

That prodigious duo has moved on to bigger and wealthier pastures, and Mainz have struggled to compensate. The team fell short in a two-legged play-off for a Europa League berth and are now languishing in 14th place in the table.

But Tuchel is taking the new and unwelcome challenges of this season with admirable aplomb.

"I have no reason to complain," Tuchel said. "Sometimes there are phases where things aren't going so well on the pitch. But that doesn't mean your overall mood has to suffer."

Mainz haven't been playing badly, but more than one coach would have blown his stack by now at so few points as a reward. So where does the Bundesliga's youngest coach get this sort of level-headed maturity?

The professor's apprentice

Tuchel's career as player was anything but stellar, progressing no further than an eight-game stint in the second-division, after which he dropped down to third-division Ulm.

But the demotion was a blessing in disguise, as it put the defender under the mentorship of coach Ralf Rangnick. When injury ended his playing days, Tuchel went into coaching and also ended up working for the cerebral strategist known as "The Professor."

The brand of pressing, offensive football Tuchel has so successfully instituted in Mainz bears many hallmarks of Rangnick's style. It's Tuchel's commitment to quality play over grinding out results that might have helped him keep his cool in 2011-12.

Rangnick shockingly threw in the towel last week in Schalke after being diagnosed with burnout syndrome. So what does the apprentice think about his mentor's temporarily demise?

"On the one hand, I'm surprised in that I knew nothing about his situation," Tuchel said. "But on the other, I'm not surprised. I can imagine - indeed I know myself - the sort of pressure you put yourself under, and how the job can take over."

Tuchel's name did crop up on the margins of the rumor mill surrounding Rangnick's successor. It was never very likely he'd have left Mainz right now, but the Royal Blues would have counted themselves lucky to get him - as one of the two most coveted young coaches in German football right now.

No Klopp clone

Fans in Mainz and elsewhere were left scratching their heads when Tuchel, then a 35-year-old unknown, was appointed head coach just days before the start of 2009-10 season. But Mainz has a soft spot for less-than-fastidiously-groomed whirling dervishes on the sidelines.

The man who propelled Mainz into the top flight after years of frustration was Jürgen Klopp, now at Dortmund, another advocate of the modern pressing game.

Tuchel says he doesn't mind comparisons with the hyperactive coach who led Dortmund to the title last season. But he points out that his time and Klopp's at Mainz did not overlap.

And if anything, the unassuming Tuchel is even more of a fan first than the media-friendly Klopp.

"I'm something of a football romanticist," Tuchel said. "What I think is important is the atmosphere, a good game on the pitch and maybe a sausage when I'm watching a match. I'm more interested in what makes me passionate, a perfect game or a perfect week of practices, than putting myself in the limelight."

Mainz may be only three points out of the relegation zone after the first fifth of the season, but no one's pushing any panic buttons. The team is giving itself a chance to win in most matches, and that's while it's adjusting to the changes within the squad. And with a much easier set of matches ahead, Mainz are a good bet to start getting results.

Still, even if they don't, Tuchel probably won't lose his cool, as long as his team is still playing the sort of football he as a fan - with or without a sausage in his hand - likes to see.

Thomas Tuchel was interviewed by Barbara Mohr for DW-TV's Bundesliga Kick Off! The program airs Mondays and Tuesday.

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Nancy Isenson