Pupil beats master as Tuchel outwits Guardiola again

PORTO, Portugal－Five months after being sacked by Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel lifted the Champions League as he got the better of Pep Guardiola once more to keep Manchester City waiting for European glory.

A 1-0 victory in Porto rounded off a roller-coaster year for the German, who was handed the chance to revive Chelsea's fortunes less than a month after losing his job in Paris.

Chelsea was ninth in the Premier League table at the time, with owner Roman Abramovich seeing little return on his 220-million-pound ($312-million) outlay on new players under Frank Lampard.

In fact, Tuchel had never met the Russian billionaire in person until they crossed paths on the pitch at Estadio do Dragao as the wild celebrations went on around them.

"Maybe I have a new contract now with that win," said Tuchel, who was only handed an 18-month deal when he signed on at Stamford Bridge.

"I spoke to Roman just now and it was the best moment for the first meeting, or maybe the worst moment. Maybe it can only get worse now!"

Kai Havertz was the most expensive purchase of that summer splurge after his 71-million-pound move from Bayer Leverkusen.

Getting the best out of Havertz was one of Tuchel's major tasks and the 21-year-old German came good on the biggest club stage of all with the only goal three minutes before halftime.

The London club finished fourth in the Premier League, a huge 19 points behind champion City, but this, remarkably, was its third win over Guardiola's side in six weeks.

It ended City's hopes of a domestic treble when it triumphed in the FA Cup semifinals in April and delayed its title celebrations with victory in Manchester.

Now, in a final watched by a limited crowd of just over 14,000 fans who created a raucous atmosphere, it has denied City the first Champions League crown the club and Guardiola so crave.

"It was an incredibly tough fight, what a fight. Today they were determined to win this. We wanted to be the stone in their shoe," Tuchel told BT Sport.

"The effort was huge. We overcame some difficult moments and had a fantastic attitude to defending."

Unlike Guardiola, Tuchel did not have a glittering playing career. A series of knee injuries forced him to retire at 25 and take up a job as a waiter, while he began his coaching career in the youth ranks of Stuttgart.

He watched from afar and was inspired as Guardiola won 14 trophies in four years at Barcelona before joining him in Germany where they battled for Bundesliga supremacy in charge of Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich respectively.

During their first meeting, the two soccer obsessives talked long into the night using glasses and salt and pepper shakers to mimic formations.

"I was such a huge admirer of Pep when he was a player and then when he became a coach it was like learning on the job for me," Tuchel said last week. "I was an academy coach and then in the Bundesliga with Mainz, but I don't think I missed a game because there was so much to learn."

Tuchel did not win any of the first five clashes between the pair during his time at Mainz and Dortmund against Guardiola's dominant Bayern side.

But the pupil has now outfoxed the master three times in the past six weeks as Chelsea completed a treble of victories over the English champion in their FA Cup semifinal and the Premier League.

Tactical battle

Guardiola spoke glowingly ahead of the game on how Tuchel's switch to a 3-4-3 formation had transformed Chelsea's season and denied City's abundance of creative midfielders space between the lines in their two previous meetings.

That allowed Tuchel to arguably win the tactical battle before a ball had even been kicked.

Often accused of overly tinkering with his lineups when the pressure is ramped up in the final stages of the Champions League, Guardiola's bold call to start without a recognized holding midfielder backfired.

Tuchel was dismissed by PSG despite leading the French giant to its own first Champions League final in August.

That time he had to suffer the pain of a 1-0 defeat to Bayern, but his desire not to leave Portugal empty-handed again was in evidence as he prowled the touchline, constantly cajoling his players and whipping up the Chelsea fans into a frenzy.

The traveling fans were among a 14,000-strong crowd that contributed hugely to the spectacle after almost a full season of European soccer behind closed doors.

Chelsea supporters showed they have not forgotten the club's all-time record scorer with cries of "super Frank" in honor of Lampard's part in getting the Blues into the top four last season to qualify for this competition, and then through the group stages before his dismissal.

But this was Tuchel's triumph and he wants more.

"Nobody wants to rest, I want the next one, the next title," he added. "I want to be a part of it and I demand to be a part of it."

City had to wait 13 years after being taken over by Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Mansour just to get to the Champions League final.

It is now the eighth consecutive team to lose in its first appearance at this stage. The same misfortune befell Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain last year as well as Tottenham Hotspur when it was beaten by Liverpool in the last all-English final in 2019.

"It is the first time we're here, we'll learn, we'll come back," Guardiola said.

"The players did everything, they wanted to do well, to win this competition, sometimes you perform well, sometimes not."

Chelsea also lost when it first got to the final, on penalties against Manchester United in Moscow in 2008.

AFP