He dreamed of being a pilot, but he became a football coach: Who is Thomas Tuchel?

Thomas Tuchel was born on August 29, 1973, in the town of Krumbach in the Bavarian region. He was interested in football during his school years, but his dream was to become a pilot. In 1988, when he turned 15, he was accepted to the FC Augsburg academy, but when he could not find the opportunity to play with the team, he joined the ranks of Stuttgarter Kickers, one of the German 2nd League teams, in 1992. He stated in his interviews about his career that he was a tough, disciplined defender who played in eight matches in the 1992-93 season and did not like to lose. He played in the middle of defense for SSV Ulm between 1994-98, but his football career ended after a knee injury when he was 24 years old.

Thomas Tuchel (born 29 August 1973) is a German professional football manager and former player who is the head coach of Bundesliga club Bayern Munich. He is widely regarded as a tactical innovator in modern football and one of the best coaches in the world.

His coaching adventure started in 2000 in the youth team of VfB Stuttgart. He helped develop Mario Gómez and Holger Badstuber, who were on the team in those years. He coached the under-19 team in the 2004-05 season. He returned to Augsburg in 2005 and club sports director Andreas Rettig appointed him as youth team coordinator. After working as coordinator for three years, he was promoted to coach of FC Augsburg 'A' team in the 2007-08 season. The team's 4th place in the 18-team league that season is a historical note. What followed was a great story of the rise, his appointment as head of Mainz in 2009, and the team finishing the league in 9th place in his first season despite the club's limited budget...

His data in the team he stayed with until 2014 is noteworthy, with 72 wins, 46 draws, and 64 losses in 182 matches and a winning percentage of 39.56 percent. His succession to Klopp, who left Dortmund in 2015, the championship he narrowly missed in his first season, the 78 points the team collected at the end of the season, the second-best in the club's history, the team's rise to the quarter-finals in the Champions League...

It is known that he is one of the coaches who pays attention to detail, and during his Mainz days, he cut the corners of the training field to improve passing and movement and made his players work with tennis balls in defense training to limit unnecessary fouls. He is also interested in the psychological aspects of his football players.

During his time at Mainz, he subjected his players to a mental test that resulted in a 30-page evaluation. In his interview about those years, he tells Christophe Berman, author of the book "Football Hackers: The Science and Art of Data Revolution", that he wants to personalize not only the training content but also the way he communicates with his players...