Thomas Tuchel
Former Chelsea head coach Thomas Tuchel was angry with himself and the performance of his team after the Blues began their Champions League group-stage campaign with a hugely disappointing and concerning 1-0 defeat to Dinamo Zagreb.
Thomas Tuchel said “I’m angry with myself and I’m angry with our performance. This is a huge underperformance from all of us. It’s not precise enough, it’s not clinical enough, it’s not aggressive enough. It’s not determined enough and not enough individually and not enough as a team and that’s why we lose this game. It’s for me to find the solution and find the reason why. Obviously, they are underperforming individually and I don’t really know where this performance today comes from. A lack of determination, a lack of hunger, and a lack of intensity to actually do the things that we need at the highest level. We are clearly not where we want to be. I don’t understand why it happened today. It’s clearly my job to analyse it so this is my analysing from the sideline and it will continue. We need to be much better. We are not finished, we are not happy with our results, and we are not happy with the way we play in general. But I thought we were on a good way. I’m a bit surprised by this performance today. Obviously, I was in the wrong movie as I did not see that coming. I thought that the last game helped us, I thought we showed a reaction in a very difficult moment against West Ham, got the reaction, got the result in the moments when you need a bit of luck in the situation we were in. We had good training sessions [ahead of tonight’s game], I thought the team was prepared, I thought we know what this is all about. I didn’t see it coming, that’s why I’m angry with myself.”
There is no respite for Tuchel and his players. They will arrive back in the United Kingdom in the early hours of Wednesday morning and are set to report to Cobham later in the day to undertake recovery work ahead of the Premier League clash with Fulham at Saturday lunchtime.
Thomas Tuchel said “There is no day off. There is no day off in the planning and there cannot be a day off at the moment [given the results].”
A first-half goal scored by Mislav Orsic and resolute defending proved enough for the Croatian side to come away with an unexpected victory and condemn Chelsea to their third consecutive away defeat, something that had not previously happened under Tuchel. The Chelsea boss is rarely upbeat after a defeat; the same goes for the majority of top-level coaches in the European game. Yet the nature of Chelsea’s performance in Zagreb resulted in Tuchel cutting a frustrated and irritated figure on the touchline and in his post-match press conference.
