The coach who followed in Jurgen Klopp’s footsteps at Mainz and Dortmund has built his success on a desire to innovate and experimentA little over three years ago,Thomas Tuchel decided that he would depart out at the top. Literally. The then 39-year-old had just hiked 3200 feet up a Swiss mountain with his Mainz 05 team to gaze at the dawn as part of his pre-season preparation when it dawned on him that he couldn’t hold his men any higher.
Tuchel had been promoted from youth to head coach two days before the start of the 2009-10 season without any prior experience at Bundesliga level. The former defender’s active career had seen him play only eight Bundesliga 2 games for Stuttgarter Kickers before a spell in the third division at Ulm under the maverick (an independent, nonconformist person) manager Ralf Rangnick – who opened his eyes to the novel concept of zonal marking and later encouraged him to start coaching – had been cruelly cut short by a debilitating knee injury in 1998. “I envied my Ulm team-mates for getting promoted soon after, I couldn’t hold it, and ” he recalled.
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Source: theguardian.com