Champions League semifinals: German coaches all the rage this year

Three German managers are involved in the Champions League semifinals for the first time in the competition’s storied history.

The Champions League semifinals are highlighted by great players and exciting games — but managers also matter when you get to this stage of the competition. For the first time in tournament history, the semifinals feature three managers from the same country. In this case, three of them are Germans.

“It’s a wonderful moment of success for German football,” former Germany striker Oliver Bierhoff, who currently serves as director of the German national team, told the Bundesliga’s official website. “We’re delighted to have not only two German teams in the semifinals, but also three German coaches and lots of our international players in the decisive phase of the competition.”

This season’s edition features three German coaches — PSG’s Thomas Tuchel, Julian Nagelsmann of RB Leipzig and Bayern Munich boss Hansi Flick — in contention for Europe’s biggest club prize. It’s another sign of the power and dominance of German soccer this season. In fact, Germany has been producing managers over the past decade similar to the same way it does luxury cars: with precision that keeps an eye on tradition and innovation.

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While many had expected Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola or Real Madrid’s Zinedine Zidane to reach the latter stages of this season’s Champions League, it has instead been a trio of Germans spearheading the effort to lift the trophy when the final is contested in Lisbon this coming Sunday.

The semifinal clash between RB Leipzig and PSG on Tuesday, for instance, will pit Julian Nagelsmann against his former mentor Thomas Tuchel, currently in charge of the French club. It was 12 years ago that Tuchel coached FC Augsburg’s reserve squad, which featured Nagelsmann, who was a center back at the time who’d suffered a career-ending knee injury.

“I still had a contract with Augsburg and that’s why Thomas approached me and, while he didn’t say, ‘you’re going to be coach,’ it was more of a pragmatic decision,” Nagelsmann told German sports website spox.de. “Since Augsburg were still paying me anyway, I started scouting opponents for him.”

That triggered the start of a coaching career that took Nagelsmann to head German club Hoffenheim before taking over at RB Leipzig at the start of this season. His meteoric rise and success even earned Nagelsmann the nickname “mini Mourinho.” At age 33, he’s the youngest manager to help a team reach the Champions League semifinals.

As for Tuchel, he too is trying to help his side win the Champions League for the first time in the club’s history. Now in his second season in France, Tuchel is looking to capture the treble after winning the league-cup double in what was a shortened Ligue 1 season due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Also looking for the treble is Bayern Munich and their manager Hansi Flick, who take on French side Lyon on Wednesday. The 55-year-old ex-Germany assistant coach (he was part of the staff when the country won the 2014 World Cup under Joachim Low) has the chance this week to help Bayern win the treble for the first time since 2013.

It would be a big upset should Bayern fail in the end, but the odds remain very good that the architect of whichever team wins it all will have a German passport to his name.